A Newcastle company director has been banned from his post for three years and ordered to pay £7,000 compensation after being caught dumping tonnes of waste.
Grant Brown, 35, appeared before Newcastle Magistrates’ Court for sentencing after he had previously admitted his guilt of dumping waste contaminated with aspestos on farmland.
He was ordered to pay the landowner of the farm in Stocksfield £7,000 to help clean up the mess.
Brown, director of GB Waste Management, claimed to collect and dispose of waste safely but an investigation found he did not have the necessary permit.
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Gary Wallace, Area Environment Manager for the Environment Agency in the North East, said: “Waste criminals target property and land to dump waste they’ve illegally collected and disappear, leaving a huge clean-up bill for landowners, and dumped waste causes contamination and is a major fire risk.
“In this case we were able to trace the waste back to Brown and after an Environment Agency investigation he’s been put before the courts for his offending.
“If you are approached to store waste for someone else or discover waste has been dumped on your land or property then report it to the Environment Agency’s incident hotline on 0800 807060 so we can investigate.”
Brown's company operated out of Bells Close industrial site and an Environment Agency officer visited in September 2021 after receiving a report of an illegal waste site.
The officer discovered that the company did not have an environmental permit.
After another visit in November, Brown told EA workers that he was dissolving the company and all his skips and trucks would be sold.
A month later the director had posted before and after pictures of a garden full of waste on Facebook.
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On November 25, 2021, 20 tonnes of waste was dumped on farmland near Stocksfield.
Items found in the waste were easily linked to Brown and his company.
It cost £32,000 to clear the waste from the farmland and during the process aspestos was discovered.
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