£700 penalty for box blaze

A MAN who started a fire near a field of stubble during a major heatwave has been ordered to pay £700.

Adam Stanton, of Coronation Drive in Crosby, was prosecuted after burning boxes next to fields in Great Altcar before driving away with the fire still burning.

The incident happened shortly after extensive damage had been caused in wildfires around the country last summer.

Officers from West Lancashire Borough Council traced a can seen by witnesses back to Stanton, who admitted he was the driver and responsible for the waste being tipped.

When officers told him the possible danger of setting fire to this waste, he told them that he thought it might rain.

After he repeated this claim in court, Wigan magistrates responded: “Unless he had been living in a different world they were at odds to understand how he was not aware that fires had been a significant problem nationally at the time he committed the offence and the potential harm he could have caused.”

Stanton pleaded guilty to fly tipping and failing to comply with a legal notice asking him for details of who else was in the vehicle.

He was given 250 hours’ community service and a probation order. The court told him he would have to pay £628.56 costs and an £85 victim surcharge making a total of £713.56.