Hampshire company fined for operating illegally at Wiltshire farm
Fareham firm admits illegal sewage spread
Cleansing Services Group treated and spread sewage without permission
Waste management company Cleansing Services Group Ltd has been fined more than £62,000 after it treated sewage without a permit, despite knowing that they were acting illegally.
Based at Fareham, in Hampshire, the company operates throughout the country.
They appeared before Bristol magistrates’ court on 18 January for sentencing on a charge of failing to comply with an exemption for the storage of sewage sludge, brought by the Environment Agency. They were fined £62,127 and ordered to pay £9,827.15 in costs and £180 statutory surcharge. The company pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing.
The court heard that the company was contracted to treat sewage waste at Kingsdown Farm, in Longbridge Deverill, near Warminster, in Wiltshire.
An investigation by the Environment Agency during October 2020 found that the company did not have the legally-required permits to screen sewage before it entered tanks ready for spreading on land. A skip at the farm contained sewage “rag,” including gloves and plastic. The landowner was not involved in the work and was unaware of the unpermitted screening activities.
One of the tanks used to spread sewage illegally on a Wiltshire farm
In a written submission, the company accepted that no permit was in place at the site for the screening and removal of debris before storage and later injection of the sludge into the land. They described this as an “oversight.”
But the company had previously applied for a judicial review of what constituted treatment requiring a permit in relation to section 3 exemptions, and whether the removal of rag was in fact a treatment requiring a permit.
In a judgment handed down in February 2019, Lady Justice Rafferty concluded: “The screening process carried out by the claimant to remove debris from the sludge is unquestionably a form of treatment,” and that, in her view, it was not particularly burdensome to arrange for the screening of debris in sludge at an appropriately-permitted treatment facility.
Cleansing Services Group has been fined more than £72,000 for not having a permit from the Environment Agency to work with sewage
Following the court hearing, Stephanie Marriott, of the Environment Agency, said:
Cleansing Services Group operates nationwide, and as a large company that had gone to the trouble of applying for a judicial review, knew full well they were acting illegally at this farm.
As a regulator, the Environment Agency will not hesitate to pursue companies that fail to meet their obligations to the environment.
The company was charged as follows:
Between 6 November 2019 and 30 September 2020, Cleansing Services Group Ltd, of Barnes Wallis Road, Segensworth East, in Fareham, was operating a regulated facility, except under and to the extent authorised by an environmental permit, namely a waste operation including the deposit and storage of controlled waste, on land at Kingsdown Farm, Longbridge Deverill, in Warminster. This was in respect of no environmental permit in force, contrary to regulations 38(1)(a) and 12(1)(a) of the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016.