A 72-year-old man has been sent to jail for six months for allowing an illegal waste site to run on his property in Essex.
On Friday (11 July), Chelmsford Crown Court activated part of a suspended prison sentence handed to Roger Frederick Phipps last year as he had failed to meet a court order to pay court costs and fines totalling £35,000 and remove ‘the majority’ of waste left at Michelins Farm in Rayleigh by 30 June 2014.
Case background
In January 2013, Chelmsford Crown Court sentenced Phipps to an eight-month jail term (suspended for two years), ordered him to pay £35,000 (in court costs and fines) and carry out 180 hours of unpaid work, after finding him guilty of running an illegal waste site.
According to Mark Watson, prosecuting for the Environment Agency and Rochford District Council at the time, Essex County Fire Service attended 35 fires at Michelins Farm between December 2009 and June 2010.
The fires, fuelled by plastics, tyres, building materials and cylinders, were reported to have taken place ‘mostly at night’ and produced thick black smoke which raised concerns within the fire service for the wellbeing of ‘adjoining highways, railways and power supplies’.
‘Covert surveillance’ carried out by EA officers in May 2010 found that lorries had been delivering waste to the site for burning (despite the farm not holding a waste permit, planning permission for a waste site, or an environmental permit) and, in June 2010, EA officers accompanied the police to the farm following reports that a ‘large fire with a plume of black smoke’ was visible from the A127.
According to Watson, Phipps was arrested and questioned on 3 June 2010 and further interviewed on 19 July 2010 but ‘offered no comment to questions’. Despite this and ‘several letters from the council’, the court heard, the site was still operational ‘six months later’.
‘Every opportunity’ to comply
Phipps was recalled to court on Friday as he had failed to meet the court order to pay the £35,000 of costs and fines and remove the ‘majority’ of waste from his land by the agreed date of 30 June 2014 (he had, however, undertaken the agreed hours of unpaid work).
Judge David Turner, who had previously described Phipps as ‘a cantankerous individual’ with ‘an entrenched position’, said the decision to activate the prison sentence had been taken as the defendant had been given ‘every opportunity’ to comply with the law.
Read more about the Michelins Farm case.
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