A company and its director have been fined for ignoring Environment Agency warnings to stop burning waste on rural land in West Yorkshire.
Bardsey Tree Services was fined £2,500, and ordered to pay costs of £3,000 and a victim surcharge of £1,000.
Company director Andrew Richard Ward, 56, was fined £960, and ordered to pay £1,274.50 in costs and a £384 victim surcharge.
Both pleaded guilty at York Magistrates’ Court to two offences of burning waste on land near Wetherby on separate occasions between August 2023 and August 2024.
The company, which offers tree services including operating as a tree surgeon, leases land off Compton Lane, a few miles away from Wetherby.
On 10 August 2023, Environment Agency officers attended the site and saw a fire which consisted of mixed waste. They could not find anyone present on the site.
Away from the fire was a pile of tree trunks, a large pile of wood chippings and an even larger pile of mixed soil, rubble, wood and metal.
The defendants had no registered environmental permit or waste exemption, which allows for low level waste activity.
The Environment Agency said it wrote to the defendants with instructions to stop burning waste on the land and to clear the site within three months.
Two months later, the company registered a waste exemption for the site, which authorised the burning of certain categories of ‘green’ waste, such as tree and plant cuttings, provided that both the waste was produced on the land and any fire does not cause a nuisance.
However, Environment Agency officers attended the site again in July 2024 and found a fire burning, producing thick grey smoke.
The Environment Agency said the fire was predominantly green waste but also included plastics, treated wood, metal and aerosol cannisters. Again, no one was present.
In interviews, Ward admitted taking waste away from customers to the site, and that wood chippings were provided to biomass power stations.
Ward said the fires were used as a means of dealing with residual waste and added that the site had become known as a dumping ground for other operators’ waste.
Commenting on the case, Ian Foster, Area Environment Manager for the Environment Agency in Yorkshire, said: “Burning waste on land can have a significant impact on the environment and local communities.
“Our officers made it clear to the defendants multiple times that the activity on site was illegal, but this was ignored.”
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