An illegal waste operator has been sentenced to a total of eight months imprisonment and ordered to pay costs of £9,449 for waste offences.

David Ham, 36, of the Old Dairy, Whelford in Gloucestershire, was sentenced at Banbury Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday (2 July) for offences relating to the illegal storage of waste at the Old Dairy site and for keeping waste in an unsuitable manner at Faringdon Business Park on Chowle Farm in Oxfordshire.

The sentencing followed a hearing at Oxford Magistrates’ Court in December 2011, where Ham was sentenced to 25 weeks in prison for burning waste and running an illegal waste businesses from the Old Dairy and Faringdon Business Park sites without an environmental permit.

However, the court this week heard that Environment Agency (EA) investigations revealed he was continuing his illegal activities at both sites.

Ham was also sentenced for failing to comply with two court orders to remove the waste at both sites, and for failing to attend court ‘without a reasonable excuse’ on a previous occasion (29 April 2013).

The court sentenced the defendant to four months’ imprisonment for each of the two offences (to run consecutively), one month for each of the failures to comply with the remediation orders (to run concurrently) and 14 days imprisonment for failing to attend court. A total of eight months imprisonment, suspended for two years, would be granted on the following conditions:

• Ham must not commit any further offences in that period or the term of imprisonment may be activated;
• he will be subject to a two-year supervision order by the probation service;
• he must attend 10 sessions for education and training ‘to enhance his reading skills’; and
• he must undertake 200 hours of unpaid community work.

At Tuesday’s hearing in Oxford, the defendant was also ordered to pay £9,449 costs incurred by the Environment Agency in bringing the prosecution. The court heard that £8,500 of this would be paid within 14 days, from the proceeds of the sale of one of Ham’s business vehicles.

Speaking of the sentencing, Environment Officer Jack Knight said: “This second custodial sentence, the supervision order and the community service order send out a clear message to criminals that the Environment Agency and the justice system take waste crime seriously and that offenders can expect strong sentencing to follow their conviction.”

Indeed, the EA has recently been clamping down on waste crime, and last month launched Operation Cyclone, a day of action that incorporated stop and searches for vehicles and unannounced visits to waste sites ‘to stop illegal waste activity that undercuts legitimate business and blights local communities’.

According to the EA, there are still in excess of 800 illegal waste sites operating throughout England and Wales, some of which ‘covertly hold hazardous waste and chemicals without safeguards’ and ‘risk causing serious pollution incidents that damage rivers, habitats and pose a risk to human health’.