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<p>The Government is committed to tackling waste crime and we are preparing significant
reforms to continue to increase the pressure on illegal waste operators. We recently
published our Government response to reform of the waste exemptions regime with the
intention of closing loopholes and preventing exemptions from being misused to permit
risky and illegal activity. Our planned electronic waste tracking reforms will make
it harder than ever to mis-identify waste or dispose of it inappropriately. Planned
changes to the Carriers, Brokers and Dealers licensing regime will modernise licensing
and make it harder still for rogue operators to escape detection. These will come
in addition to measures in the Environment Act 2021 which gives agencies stronger
powers of entry and access to evidence in prosecuting waste crime as well as providing
the Environment Agency with the ability to recover costs of investigation, intervention
and enforcement at illegal or non-compliant waste sites.</p><p>The Government also
launched the Joint Unit for Waste Crime (JUWC) in 2020. It brings together the Environment
Agency, HM Revenue & Customs, the National Crime Agency, the police, waste regulators
from across the UK and other operational partners to share intelligence and tasking
to disrupt and prevent serious organised waste crime. In the three years since the
JUWC launched it has worked with 102 partner organisations and engaged in 175 multi-agency
days of action, which have resulted in 51 associated arrests by other agencies.</p>
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