Scrap firm’s £7,000 bill for unlicensed waste metal facility

Meadowbank Special Steels (Commodities) Ltd of Harrison Street, Rotherham, was fined £3,000 and must pay costs of £4,000 to the agency, which brought the case.

Rotherham Magistrates’ Court heard that the company had been operating since 2008 and had been granted an exemption which allowed it to store and process metal on only a small part of its site.

During a routine visit in August 2009, the agency’s officers found that the drainage was unsuitable and that metal was being stored outside of the agreed area.

The court heard that despite repeated visits in September, October and November 2009, the company had still not fully complied with the instructions, so its exemption was revoked in December 2009.

In January 2010, Environment Agency officers found Meadowbank had cleared up the area they had previously been concerned about, but had not removed piles of waste from the rest of the site as agreed.

They also found that the company had started a new process cleaning metal shavings so that the metal could be reprocessed. This process required a special permit which the company did not have.

Meadowbank has since applied for a full permit to carry out its activities, but it will not be valid until it provides satisfactory details to the agency about how it intends to clear up the site.

The company said it will be spending £300,000 on repairs and improvements to the site and “lessons had been learned”.

Speaking after the case, environment officer Lindsey Jones said: “Environmental permits are there to protect the environment, and we take cases where businesses operate without them very seriously. We always aim to prosecute when a company puts its local environment at risk.”