Fly-tippers have dumped a monumental mountain of waste in an Oxfordshire field, in an illegal dumping operation that a local MP has labelled as “pollution on a grotesque scale”.
The mountain of rubbish is up to 150m long and 6m high, appearing on a site between the River Cherwell – a tributary of the River Thames – and the A34 near Kidlington. The illegal dump is said to have been created by an organised crime group and is believed to weigh hundreds of tonnes.
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Calum Miller, Liberal Democrat MP for Bicester and Woodstock, has raised the issue in Parliament, saying it is “threatening an environmental disaster”. He also flagged that the cost of removing the waste would be higher than the entire annual budget of Cherwell District Council.
The top of the rubbish heap has toppled and is now just five metres from the river, leading to concerns about the toxic run-off entering the river system, poisoning wildlife and compromising the health of the water catchment.
The Environment Agency has said it would try to “ensure those responsible” for the waste clear it up. They have put a restriction order in place to prevent further access to the site. “The cornerstone of our investigations is to ensure those responsible for waste clear it,” the agency said in a statement. “The Environment Agency would only step in and clear this or any site if it was abandoned, had no identifiable person, or the waste posed an imminent threat to life – we operate under the Polluter Pays Principle.”
Thames Valley Police has said it is not currently involved in the case, with the Environment Agency leading the investigation.
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This isn’t the first major fly-tipping incident to hit headlines in the last year, with 20 tonnes of waste illegally dumped on National Trust land at Holt Heath in Dorset in October, and a “garbage mountain” of 30 tonnes of rubbish dumped on a public road in Lichfield in February 2025, costing the council just short of £10,000 to clear.
A recent House of Lords report from the Environment and Climate Change Committee found efforts to tackle serious waste crime have been “critically under-prioritised”, despite illegal dumping operations becoming bigger and more sophisticated. The report recommended an independent investigation into the dumping of more than 30,000 tonnes of household and construction waste at Hoads Wood in Kent and other illegal sites. It stated that over 38 million tonnes of waste had been illegally dumped each year – enough to fill Wembley Stadium 35 times. This challenge has been referred to as “the new narcotics”.
Committee chair Baroness Shas Sheehan concluded in her statement in the report: “Despite the scale and seriousness of the crimes, we have found multiple failings by the Environment Agency and other agencies from slow responses to repeated public reports through to a woeful lack of successful convictions.”
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Top image credit: Getty Images
