The Environment Agency is calling in hi tech help to track down illegal dumping in a field at Copythorne, Hampshire.

Dumped material included wood, plastics, tar, metals and even lumps of concrete. The unauthorised work was done in the autumn of 2006 and angered people living in the area. Objectors held a public meeting and also staged a demonstration. In May 2007 and June 2008 the Environment Agency prosecuted the landowner, Mr Kenneth Lovett, who lives next door to the field, for offences relating to flood risk, illegal deposit of waste, and environmental protection. Lovett said the work was carried out to raise the level of the land and prevent it becoming waterlogged. He was fined a total of £3,550 for the offences and ordered to pay £2,375 costs.

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Now teams will be on site this month to use state-of-the-art geophysical equipment similar to the kit used on Channel Four’s Time Team programme to detect ground disturbance and underground features.

This will help to ascertain if waste material is lying underground before diggers return to the Hampshire site next week to investigate further. If it is determined that illegally deposited waste material is present below the surface, the New Forest National Park Authority will arrange to have it removed. The Ranger has used this kind of investigation before, and I am aware this is a very, very expensive process. They must be really keen to get this rubbish out.

The New Forest National Park Authority (yes, this land is in the National Park) issued an order in December 2006 for the spoil to be removed and the land restored. At that time the ruling was welcomed by campaigners and nearby resident, Ruth Farmers, said: "Obviously, we are delighted. It is the right decision and it supports the policies of the national park." She was particularly pleased by the order for the restoration of the watercourse. She said: "We have had quite bad flooding of people's gardens and the fields are so wet you can't use them. Thankfully, the drainage system, which was put in Victorian times and has worked for 150 years, will now be restored."

Now, three years later, Mrs Farmers is probably wondering if her celebrations were premature. This unsocial landowner has still not put his land in order - if indeed it is possible to do so. Goodness knows what the cost of investigating this case has been, or how much further expenditure will be incurred. I'd be surprised if the geophys alone costs less than £5,000.

It's always been a mystery to me why the actual costs of an investigation and court case are not put to defendants in this kind of prosecution. After all, what is the incentive to planning authorities and other enforcement agencies? The more they investigate and prosecute, the more it costs them. Is it any wonder that so many offences go uninvestigated or unpunished? As it is, it's a rare day indeed when costs are awarded to a pubic body, even if the defendant is guilty. Most people seem to imagine that this is already the case - and when you read in the local paper 'costs were awarded...' do you feel smug that the taxpayer is not having to subsidise this criminal? In fact usually we are.

With belt-tightening all around the public sector maybe it's time that those who commit offences are obliged to pay a fairer share of the costs of mitigation.