Liquid food waste specialist Tank Industrial Maintenance Limited has been ordered to pay £38,000 after being found guilty of waste crime.

Last month (23 February), the Sheffield-based company and its former company director, Timothy Rowley, pleaded guilty to eight offences relating to illegal land spreading, and on Thursday (5 March) were ordered to pay £38,000 for spreading 2,023 tonnes of liquid waste on land in Doncaster and Worksop without the relevant permits.

Case details

Nottingham Crown Court heard that, between February 2013 and September 2013, Tank Industrial Maintenance Limited spread approximately 2,023 tonnes of liquid waste to fields at Baxter Farm, Doncaster, and Clumber Farm, Worksop, without a deployment form being agreed by the Environment Agency (EA).

Although the company had an environmental permit that allowed it to spread food waste to land for agricultural benefit, it was a condition of the permit that a deployment form would be submitted and agreed by the EA before any land spreading activities took place.

However, it was revealed that the EA had written a warning letter to the company in December 2012, after it found that it was spreading excess liquid waste at Clumber Farm without an agreed deployment application.

Further, land spreading activities were found to be taking place in February 2013, despite the relevant deployment form having expired the previous month.

The EA later found that, in spite of the warning letter, land spreading occurred on four separate occasions at Clumber Farm between July 2013 and September 2013, before a deployment form had been considered and processed by the Environment Agency. That deployment application was later rejected by the Environment Agency.

According to Rowley, who was at that time in charge of land spreading operations in his capacity as director (although he has since resigned), the decision to spread food waste to land was taken after the company found it had collected too much liquid waste from its waste producers and did not have adequate storage capacity to hold it. The company claimed that it had not realised that the deployment agreement at Baxter Farm had expired when the spreading took place, but argued that it had to spread the waste at Clumber Farm as the EA was ‘taking too long to process the deployment application’.

It also conceded that there was no technically competent person overseeing the land spreading operations, despite that being a requirement under the Environmental Permitting (England & Wales) Regulations 2010.

After hearing the evidence, His Honour Judge Hamilton stated that the environmental impact caused as result of the offences was said ‘limited and localised’ but that the defendants should not have resorted to criminal activity in order to save contracts with food processing companies.

As such, he fined Tank Industrial Maintenance Limited a total of £20,000 to remove from the company any profit made from their illegal activity, and ordered it to pay £18,000 in prosecution costs.

The judge also disqualified Rowley as a director for four years, fined him £1,000 and ordered him to pay a contribution towards prosecution costs of £572, in view of his ‘limited means’.

‘We will not hesitate to take enforcement action in future’

After the sentencing last week, Environment Management Team Leader Richard Moore said: “This company was given a warning and still didn’t comply. Our rules are in place for a good reason and to ensure that any waste that is spread is done correctly and managed in a way that protects the environment. We will not hesitate to take enforcement action in future for those who breach their permits and refuse to cooperate.

“I hope this case sends out a message to other land spreading operators and farmers who receive waste, that we take land spreading offences very seriously. It should also highlight to operators who rely on spreading waste to land the importance of having contingency plans in place to allow them to cope with extreme weather and other disruptions to their operations. And I would urge farmers who receive waste to find out what is going on at their land. Wastes can be beneficial, but they must be spread correctly and in accordance with the regulations.”

Guidance for farmers relating to land spreadingcan be found online.