The Environment Agency has decided to spend millions clearing an illegal waste mountain in Oxfordshire, citing fire risk as exceptional enough to override its usual policy of leaving cleanup to the perpetrators. The decision has exposed a painful gap: 25,000 tonnes of toxic waste has been rotting in Bickershaw, Wigan—next to a primary school—for nearly a year, and the EA says it won't be clearing that one.
In summer, the Wigan dump caught fire and burned for nine days. The school closed. Residents stayed indoors. Josh Simons, the MP for Makerfield, has made the comparison unavoidable: if fire risk justifies an exceptional cleanup in Oxfordshire, why not in Wigan, where children actually attend school metres away from the burning rubbish.
"What is not exceptional about a toxic waste dump on fire right next to a primary school," Simons asked, cutting to the obvious question. The implication—that geography and class are determining who gets help—has stung because it's hard to argue otherwise.
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Start Your News DetoxThe Environment Agency's standard approach is to pursue the criminals and landowners responsible, leaving cleanup to them or the courts. But "exceptional" decisions, it turns out, do get made. The agency says the Oxfordshire scale and fire risk warranted breaking protocol. They're "laser-focused on finding the offenders" in both cases, a spokesperson said—a statement that rings hollow to people living next to an active hazard.
The broader picture is grimmer still. A House of Lords inquiry into waste crime found that 38 million tonnes of waste—enough to fill Wembley Stadium 35 times—is being illegally dumped every year in the UK. Organized criminals are making millions from it. This week, ministers rejected all the inquiry's recommendations. The Environment Secretary promised new policies in the new year but refused calls for a serious overhaul of how waste crime is tackled.
What's emerging is a system that responds unevenly to identical problems, where the loudest voices or the right location can unlock resources that stay locked for others. That's not a failure of individual decisions so much as a failure of the framework itself—one that treats illegal dumping as a law enforcement problem rather than a public health crisis requiring immediate action regardless of where it happens.
