Willie Rennie

Despite incidents being reported in 30 of Scotland’s local areas, only eight councils passed cases on to the Crown Office.

Prosecutions can result in fines of up to £40,000 while fixed penalty notices stand at £200. The government launched a review into the practice last month.

Willie Rennie, Scottish Liberal Democrat communities spokesman, said: “Not only does fly-tipping spoil the appearance of our beautiful country, it can be devastating for crops and animals. From remote beauty spots to busy cities, these figures show that this is a widespread issue, yet only a tiny fraction of cases ever result in a fine or a trip to court.

“With refuse collections disrupted and tips closed for long stretches, it’s no surprise that this has been a particular issue since the pandemic hit. The Scottish government has effectively legalised littering on an industrial scale.”

Data collected by the Lib Dems via freedom of information requests indicate that there have been 134,974 fly-tipping incidents across Scotland since September 2019. A spike in offences occurred after lockdown came into force. The Scottish government’s paper on dealing with the problem said the pandemic has “posed a number of new challenges in regards to litter and fly-tipping”.

The Scottish government said: “We want a Scotland that is free of the blight of fly-tipping and last month we proposed a bold set of measures to tackle this issue. These include more than doubling the fines for fly-tipping and developing best practice guidance to support authorities with powers to issue fines. We are also looking at the possibility of using civil penalties to enforce offences.”