Environment Agency bosses have been accused of “failing” to tell a cross-party committee of peers about three large-scale illegal waste sites – including one that was recently exposed by Sky News. 

Our investigation into waste crime in Wigan heard from residents who repeatedly complained to the Environment Agency that 20 to 30 lorries a day drove down their street last winter and dumped industrial amounts of waste.

The rubbish now sits at a staggering 25,000 tonnes. It burnt for nine days in July, and has seen local homes infested with rats and flies.

Since then, a similarly sized site in Kidlington near the River Cherwell in Oxfordshire sparked national outrage. One man has been arrested in connection with the dumping.

Despite the scale of these two locations – which were well known to the Environment Agency – it neglected to name them when asked by the Lord’s Environment Committee’s inquiry into waste crime how many “significant” sites there were around the country.

Phil Davies and Steve Molyneux of the Environment Agency gave evidence on 17 September.

Just six sites were cited, but three more have been exposed in the past few weeks alone. These are Wigan, Kidlington and a mound of dumped waste in Wadborough.

Now, the Lords are worried there are more environmentally destructive locations the public aren’t aware of.

Read more:
A community plagued by 25,000 tonnes of illegal waste
Urgent action needed to stop fly-tipping by gangs, peers say

In a letter to the EA’s chair Alan Lovell and chief executive Philip Duffy, Baroness Sheehan, chair of the Environment and Climate Change Committee, said: “We are increasingly concerned that there may be other sites of a similarly large and environmentally damaging scale.”

She asked how much progress has been made to remove waste from the various sites, why restriction notices in places like Wigan weren’t served sooner – and for a full list of other sites of a similar size.

Baroness Sheehan also expressed her “disappointment” that these three new locations “were not deemed necessary to bring to the committee’s attention”, though she thanked journalists for “bringing these sites to the public attention”.

Her original report saw the Lords call for an independent “root and branch” inquiry into how waste crime is tackled. She said the crime, which costs the UK £1bn every year, has been “critically under-prioritised”.

Sky News has been investigating the scourge of waste crime all year, exposing how criminal gangs involved in drugs, weapons and people trafficking can make “millions” from illegally dumping waste.

In the summer, we tracked down a group of suspected organised fly-tippers who waved wads of cash on TikTok after dumping waste in the countryside.

It’s so lucrative, it was dubbed the “new narcotics” by a former head of the Environment Agency.

A new long-awaited child poverty strategy is promising to lift half a million children out of poverty by the end of this parliament – but critics have branded it unambitious. 

The headline announcement in the government’s plan is the pledge to lift the two-child benefit cap, announced in Rachel Reeves’s budget last week.

It also includes:

• Providing upfront childcare support for parents on universal credit returning to work
• An £8m fund to end the placement of families in bed and breakfasts beyond a six-week limit
• Reforms to cut the cost of baby formula
• A new legal duty on councils to notify schools, health visitors, and GPs when a child is placed in temporary accommodation

Many of the measures have previously been announced.

The government also pointed to its plan in the budget to cut energy bills by £150 a year, and its previously promised £950m boost to a local authority housing fund, which it says will deliver 5,000 high-quality homes for better temporary accommodation.

Downing Street said the strategy would lift 550,000 children out of poverty by 2030, saying that would be the biggest reduction in a single parliament since records began.

But charities had been hoping for a 10-year strategy and argue the plan lacks ambition.

A record 4.5 million children (about 31%) are living in poverty in the UK – 900,000 more since 2010/11, according to government figures.

Phillip Anderson, the Strategic Director for External Affairs at the National Children’s Bureau (NCB), told Sky News: “Abolishing the two-child limit is a hell of a centre piece, but beyond that it’s mainly a summary of previously announced policies and commitments.

“The really big thing for me is it misses the opportunity to talk about the longer term. It was supposed to be a 10-year strategy, we wanted to see real ambition and ideally legally binding targets for reducing poverty.

“The government itself says there will still be around four million children living in poverty after these measures and the strategy has very little to say to them.”

‘Budget for benefits street’ row

The biggest measure in the strategy is the plan to lift the two-child benefit cap from April. This is estimated to lift 450,000 children out of poverty by 2030, at a cost of £3bn.

The government has long been under pressure from backbench Labour MPs to scrap the cap, with most experts arguing that it is the quickest, most cost-effective way to drive-down poverty this parliament.

The cap, introduced by Conservative chancellor George Osborne in 2017, means parents can only claim universal credit or tax credits for their first two children. It meant the average affected household losing £4,300 per year, the Institute for Fiscal Studies calculated in 2024.

The government argues that a failure to tackle child poverty holds back the economy, and young people at school, cutting their employment and earning prospects in later life.

However, the Conservatives argue parents on benefits should have to make the same financial choices about children as everyone else.

Shadow chancellor Mel Stride said: “Work is the best way out poverty but since this government took office, unemployment has risen every single month and this budget for Benefits Street will only make the situation worse. “

‘Bring back Sure Start’

Lord Bird, a crossbench peer who founded the Big Issue and grew up in poverty, said while he supported the lifting of the cap there needed to be “more joined up thinking” across government for a longer-term strategy.

He has been pushing for the creation of a government ministry of “poverty prevention and cure”, and for legally binding targets on child poverty.

“You have to be able to measure yourself, you can’t have the government marking its own homework,” he told Sky News.

Lord Bird also said he was a “great believer” in resurrecting Sure Start centres and expanding them beyond early years.

The New Labour programme offered support services for pre-school children and their parents and is widely seen to have improved health and educational outcomes. By its peak in 2009-2010 there were 3,600 centres – the majority of which closed following cuts by the subsequent Conservative government.

PM to meet families

Sir Keir Starmer’s government have since announced 1,000 Best Start Family Hubs – but many Labour MPs feel this announcement went under the radar and ministers missed a trick in not calling them “Sure Starts” as it is a name people are familiar with.

The prime minister is expected to meet families and children in Wales on Friday, alongside the Welsh First Minister, to make the case for his strategy and meet those he hopes will benefit from it.

Several other charities have urged ministers to go further. Both Crisis and Shelter called for the government to unfreeze housing benefit and build more social rent homes, while the Children’s Commissioner for England, Dame Rachel de Souza, said that “if we are to end child poverty – not just reduce it” measures like free bus travel for school-age children would be needed.

The strategy comes after the government set up a child poverty taskforce in July 2024, which was initially due to report back in May. The taskforce’s findings have not yet been published – only the government’s response.

Sir Keir said: “Too many children are growing up in poverty, held back from getting on in life, and too many families are struggling without the basics: a secure home, warm meals and the support they need to make ends meet.

“I will not stand by and watch that happen, because the cost of doing nothing is too high for children, for families and for Britain.”

The assassination attempt on a former Russian spy was authorised by Vladimir Putin, who is “morally responsible” for the death of a woman poisoned by the nerve agent used in the attack, a public inquiry has found.

The chairman, Lord Hughes, found there were “failings” in the management of Sergei Skripal, 74, who was a member of Russian military intelligence, the GRU, before coming to the UK in 2010 on a prisoner exchange after being convicted of spying for Britain.

But he found the assessment that he wasn’t at “significant risk” of assassination was not “unreasonable” at the time of the attack in Salisbury on 4 March 2018, which could only have been avoided by hiding him with a completely new identity.

Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia, 41, who was also poisoned, were left seriously ill, along with then police officer Nick Bailey, who was sent to search their home, but they all survived.

Dawn Sturgess, 44, died on 8 July, just over a week after unwittingly spraying herself with novichok given to her by her partner, Charlie Rowley, 52, in a perfume bottle in nearby Amesbury on 30 June 2018. Mr Rowley was left seriously ill but survived.

In his 174-page report, following last year’s seven-week inquiry, costing more than £8m, former Supreme Court judge Lord Hughes said she received “entirely appropriate” medical care but her condition was “unsurvivable” from a very early stage.

The inquiry found GRU officers using the aliases Alexander Petrov, 46, and Ruslan Boshirov, 47, had brought the Nina Ricci bottle containing the novichok to Salisbury after arriving in London from Moscow with a third agent known as Sergey Fedotov to kill Mr Skripal on 2 March.

The report said it was likely the same bottle Petrov and Boshirov used to apply the military-grade nerve agent to the handle of Mr Skripal’s front door before it was “recklessly discarded”.

“They can have had no regard to the hazard thus created, of the death of, or serious injury to, an uncountable number of innocent people,” it said.

It is “impossible to say” where Mr Rowley found the bottle, but was likely within a few days of it being abandoned on 4 March, meaning there is “clear causative link” with the death of mother-of-three Ms Sturgess.

Lord Hughes said he was sure the three GRU agents “were acting on instructions”, adding: “I have concluded that the operation to assassinate Sergei Skripal must have been authorised at the highest level, by President Putin.

“I therefore conclude that those involved in the assassination attempt (not only Petrov, Boshirov and Fedotov, but also those who sent them, and anyone else giving authorisation or knowing assistance in Russia or elsewhere) were morally responsible for Dawn Sturgess’s death,” he said.

Russian ambassador summonsed

After the publication of the report, the government announced the GRU has been sanctioned in its entirety, and the Russian Ambassador has been summonsed to the Foreign Office to answer for Russia’s ongoing campaign of alleged hostile activity against the UK.

Sir Keir Starmer said the findings “are a grave reminder of the Kremlin’s disregard for innocent lives” and that Ms Sturgess’s “needless” death was a tragedy that “will forever be a reminder of Russia’s reckless aggression”.

“The UK will always stand up to Putin’s brutal regime and call out his murderous machine for what it is,” the prime minister said.

He said deploying the “highly toxic nerve agent in a busy city centre was an astonishingly reckless act” with an “entirely foreseeable” risk that others beyond the intended target would be killed or injured.

The inquiry heard a total of 87 people presented at A&E.

Lord Hughes said there was a decision taken not to issue advice to the public not to pick anything up which they hadn’t dropped, which was a “reasonable conclusion” at the time, so as not to cause “widespread panic”.

He also said there had been no need for training beyond specialist medics before the “completely unexpected use of a nerve agent in an English city”.

After the initial attack, wider training was “appropriate” and was given but should have been more widely circulated.

In a statement following the publication of his report, Lord Hughes said Ms Sturgess’s death was “needless and arbitrary”, while the circumstances are “clear but quite extraordinary”.

“She was the entirely innocent victim of the cruel and cynical acts of others,” he said.

‘We can have Dawn back now’

Speaking after the report was published, Ms Sturgess’s father, Stanley Sturgess, said: “We can have Dawn back now. She’s been public for seven years. We can finally put her to peace.”

In a statement, her family said they felt “vindicated” by the report, which recognised how Wiltshire police wrongly characterised Ms Sturgess as a drug user.

But they said: “Today’s report has left us with some answers, but also a number of unanswered questions.

“We have always wanted to ensure that what happened to Dawn will not happen to others; that lessons should be learned and that meaningful changes should be made.

“The report contains no recommendations. That is a matter of real concern. There should, there must, be reflection and real change.”

Wiltshire Police Chief Constable Catherine Roper admitted the pain of Ms Sturgess’s family was “compounded by mistakes made” by the force, adding: “For this, I am truly sorry.”

Russia has denied involvement

The Russian Embassy has firmly denied any connection between Russia and the attack on the Skripals.

But the chairman dismissed Russia’s explanation that the Salisbury and Amesbury poisonings were the result of a scheme devised by the UK authorities to blame Russia, and the claims of Petrov and Borisov in a television interview that they were sightseeing.

The inquiry chairman said the evidence of a Russian state attack was “overwhelming” and was designed not only as a revenge attack against Mr Skripal, but amounted to a “public statement” that Russia “will act decisively in its own interests”.

Lord Hughes found “some features of the management” of Mr Skripal “could and should have been improved”, including insufficient regular written risk assessments.

But although there was “inevitably” some risk of harm at Russia’s hands, the analysis that it was not likely was “reasonable”, he said.

“There is no sufficient basis for concluding that there ought to have been assessed to be an enhanced risk to him of lethal attack on British soil, such as to call for security measures,” such as living under a new identity or at a secret address, the chairman said.

He added that CCTV cameras, alarms or hidden bugs inside Mr Skripal’s house might have been possible but wouldn’t have prevented the “professionally mounted attack with a nerve agent”.

Sky News has approached the Russian Embassy for comment on the report.