Pair fined after running illegal city waste site
TWO Gateshead business partners have been fined after operating an illegal Newcastle waste site.
The court sentence follows a joint investigation between the Environment Agency and Newcastle City Council into multiple waste offences.
Louise Margaret Bland, 51, of King Street, Gateshead, appeared at Newcastle Crown Court on Thursday, January 20, for sentence after previously pleading guilty to operating an illegal waste site and failing to produce waste transfer notes.
David Ashley McNeill, 34, of Morris Street, Gateshead, was sentenced at Newcastle Magistrates’ Court on January 13 after previously pleading guilty to four fly-tipping offences, operating an illegal waste site, failing to comply with a notice to clear the site and failing to produce waste transfer notes.
The court heard the pair were partners in a business known as both NE1 Waste Management and NE1 Garden and Waste Services.
They were issued a waste carrier’s licence on July 23, 2020, which is a legal requirement for anyone transporting waste. Carriers must also keep records of waste types and quantities, and the place the waste is taken must be legally authorised to accept it.
On four occasions over the next four months, Newcastle City Council Enforcement Officers traced fly-tipped waste across the city at Woodstock Road, Westfield Road and Beaumont Street back to people who had paid for waste removal services from the pair via their Facebook page.
In August 2020, the Environment Agency was alerted by the council that NE1 Garden and Waste Services had leased a derelict former scrapyard at Walker Road and was also depositing waste there.
They registered a ‘waste exemption’ for the site, which means limited activity can take place without the need for an Environmental Permit, but when the Environment Agency visited, it revealed the activities were outside of the exemption. The pair were told to stop all activity at the site immediately.
They were given until September 21 2020 to clear the site of waste. During two occasions in September, Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service attended fires at the site. In October 2020, the Environment Agency issued a notice to McNeill to again clear the site of the waste he’d deposited.
During an interview in December 2020, Bland said she did not have any knowledge of the fly-tipping incidents across the city, and that the waste she collected had been disposed of correctly.
She said repeated fly-tipping at the Walker Road site had caused McNeill to end the lease there.
McNeill was sentenced to a 12-month community order to include 25 days rehabilitation, fined £100 and ordered to pay a £95 victim surcharge.
Bland was sentenced to a 12-month community order to include 20 days rehabilitation activity. She was fined £100 for breaching an unrelated suspended sentence and also ordered to pay a £95 victim surcharge.