To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs how much his Department has spent on communications to discourage fly tipping, in each of the last five years.

Fly-tipping is primarily the responsibility of local councils although the Northern Ireland Environment Agency may investigate and enforce against larger scale, higher risk fly-tipping incidents involving hazardous wastes and quantities of waste material over 20m3 by volume.

However, in recognition of potential increased risks of fly-tipping during Covid-19 restrictions in Northern Ireland the Department did take additional pro-active measures as part of its wider waste management communications strategy including sharing messages with local Councils for use on their websites and social media platforms as well as updating the Departments own internet messaging on fly-tipping via the NI Direct website. A flyer was also sent to every household in Northern Ireland with details of how to manage waste and recycling during the Covid 19 crisis, and this included sections on fly-tipping. In addition there were radio adverts on local stations and a range of social media posts on various platforms highlighting the problems of fly-tipping, littering and illegal waste dumping.

Within its broader remit the Department provides regular annual funding to Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful (KNIB) to deliver anti-littering campaigns which by definition will discourage fly-tipping activity. The messaging channels have included the Litter Loathing Puppet and Barry the Blender characters. Funding to KNIB for these anti-littering campaigns is as follows: