Landfill firm fined £4,000 for site lapse

A LANDFILL operator based in South Yorkshire has been ordered by magistrates to pay out more than £5,000 after failing to take the correct steps to shut down an old site.

Naylor Drainage Ltd pleaded guilty to one offence under the Environmental Permitting Regulations at Barnsley Magistrates' Court on Monday, November 1.

The company, of Clough Green, Cawthorne, was fined 4,000 for the breach of regulations and also ordered to pay full prosecution costs of 1,300.44, as well as a victim surcharge of 15.

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Magistrates heard that the company runs Banks Wood Quarry in South Lane, Hadden, near Cawthorne, which has been licensed as a landfill site since 1983.

Trevor Cooper, prosecuting for the Environment Agency, said a new permit issued in January 2007 covered a new part of the site but not the pre-existing licensed area.

On this basis, the Environment Agency required the existing site to be closed and Naylor Drainage was served with a notice obliging it to file a closure report.

The company had until the end of August 2009 to file the necessary report, but Mr Cooper said the firm blamed "severe cashflow problems" and poor weather for failing to complete the work it needed to do to comply with the deadline.

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The magistrates court heard that the Environment Agency finally received the closure report on October 26 last year, but even then the document was incomplete.

Mr Cooper said aggravating features of the case were the fact that Naylor Drainage had known since May 2008 that it was obliged to file the report and had failed to do so in time because it was trying to save money.

Magistrates gave credit for the company's guilty plea and accepted its mitigation that it had no previous convictions for environmental offences. They also accepted that no environmental harm had been caused by Naylor Drainage's failure to submit the report on time.