HARSHER penalties for flytippers come into force from July 1.

The crackdown will see companies and organisations liable to fines from between £100 to £3m, while individuals will face fines of between 25 per cent to 700 per cent of their weekly income and up to three years in jail.

The Sentencing Council, which has issued the guidelines, said it wanted magistrates to make more use of the highest level of fines.

These can be handed out for all types of fly-tipping “whether this is a company tipping a lorry-load of used tyres in a field, or a householder dumping an old mattress in an alleyway”, it said.

Dorothy Fairburn, North regional director for the Country Land and Business Association (CLA), said the move was long overdue.

“It is definitely a step in the right direction, but it does not deal with the problems faced by landowners who have rubbish fly-tipped on their property,” she said.

“On average, it costs the landowner about £800 to clear up each incidence of non-toxic fly-tipped waste on their land – and there is the potential for landowners to be prosecuted purely because they have not removed waste tipped on their land.”

The CLA is lobbying the Government to create a new ticketing scheme that would enable landowners to take fly-tipped rubbish to their local tip free of charge.

Miss Fairburn said: “The CLA’s action plan to tackle environmental crime calls for the Government to ensure local authorities can accept fly-tipped waste without charge to landowners, as well as an end to the prosecution of landowners who have waste dumped on their land and have to pay to remove it.”

The CLA is seeking evidence of fly-tipping on private land in the North and has asked farmers and landowners to send photographic evidence with details of date, location and any further information to north@ cla.org.uk once the crime has been reported to the police.

According to Defra, local authorities dealt with 711,000 incidents of fly-tipping in England in 2012- 2013, costing local authorities an estimated £36.4m to remove.