National Fly-tipping Awareness Week begins on Monday 23rd April as part of the Countryside Alliance's national Fly-tipping - Scrap it' campaign. New research* has found that London authorities spend almost £13million a year clearing up over 300,000 incidences of fly-tipping in the capital.

A recent investigation by the Countryside Alliance** discovered that 2.5 million incidents of unlawful rubbish dumping across the UK were recorded in the year to April 2006. The cost to local authorities alone was just under £100 million - yet less than one in 100 cases led to a prosecution. The London fly-tipping league table shows a depressing number of incidents and a very high cost to London residents - the top 10 most fly-tipped Boroughs are: Borough Number of incidents Cost of clear-up (£) London Borough of Haringey 63767 1,849,243 Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea 58374 1,876,596 London Borough of Southwark 24852 1,089,995 London Borough of Lewisham 18987 941,536 London Borough of Camden 17028 493,812 London Borough of Lambeth 10434 307,672 City of Westminster 10365 420,222 London Borough of Havering 9629 529,783 London Borough of Ealing 9044 263,076 London Borough of Islington 8812 459,431 Countryside Alliance Campaigns Director Robert Gray commented: "This is a nationwide problem that affects urban and rural areas regardless, and a solution must be found. National Fly-tipping Awareness Week aims to raise the profile of this problem with a view to doing something about it. With bin-taxes in the offing we can only expect fly-tipping to get worse as people dump their rubbish rather than pay yet another tax on it.

"Many people believe that fly-tipping is something they can get away with and that the victim is faceless. This is nonsense. If you fly-tip on public land the taxpayer gets the bill and, as well as breaking the law, you are ruining the environment for everyone."