Waste boss fined £10k for skipping EA advice

A Liverpudlian waste manager has been fined close on £10,000 after the number of skips he stored soared, despite official warnings that he was forbidden from having any.


John Corish, manager and director of Walton Skip Hire Ltd, was fined £6,700 by magistrates and ordered to pay a further £3,000 in costs after pleading guilty to operating without a waste management licence and ignoring enforcement notices.

Corish’s problems began when the cheque he sent the Environment Agency with his application for a licence bounced.

The agency wrote to the company saying the licence had not been processed and it would therefore be an offence to deposit, store or treat controlled waste at the Bankhall Lane site.

A couple of months later an agency officer visited the site and saw

approximately 13 skips full of mixed waste.

Mr Corish was told to remove them and take them to a licensed facility immediately but when officers returned to the site a month later they found that far from following their advice the company had brought in a further 50 skips.

The company was served with various notices requiring it to submit waste transfer notes to the agency and to remove all household, industrial and demolition waste but it failed to comply.

Speaking after the hearing agency officer Caroline Berry said: “As a

director of the companies, John Corish was directly involved in their unlawful

activities and as such consented to and indeed controlled actions.

“On numerous occasions he was advised as to the appropriate course of action for the companies to follow but he failed to take that advice on board.

“As a result we had no choice but to prosecute.”

By Sam Bond

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