Fines and prosecutions ‘Major fires’ see company directors convicted


NEWS


TWO FORMER directors of Lawrence Skip Hire Ltd were given suspended prison sentences after waste management ‘failures’ at their site led to two major fires. The government reported on the


July sentencing of David Lawrence and Andrew Gibson over the fires at the company’s waste recycling facility at The Forge in Kidderminster, with the facility trading under the name Lawrences Recycling and Waste Management Ltd. This site was run under an environmental permit, and was claimed by the directors to be the ‘largest indoor waste management facility in Europe’. Between August and December


2012, ‘excessive quantities’ of waste were stored there, breaching the environmental permit and ‘despite warnings given’ by the Environment Agency (EA). In December that year, waste ‘self combusted’ and caused a serious fire that burned ‘for nearly a week’, due to failures to ‘properly assess the risk of fire and manage the waste appropriately’. Despite that fire, and further


warnings from the EA and Hereford and Worcester Fire and Rescue Service (HWFRS), the company continued to both ‘accept and store’ thousands of tonnes worth of waste ‘to avoid the cost of disposal’, storing it ‘in a way that put the environment at risk’. As a consequence, these ‘further failures’ led to a second major fire in June 2013., which burned for eight weeks and ‘resulted in a major impact to the environment and local community’.


Effects included a ‘significant


impact’ on air quality, and disruption to nearby business operations, with water used to fight the fire ‘contaminated by the burning waste’, and flowing into the adjoining Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal. The government noted that this contaminated water ‘resulted in the deaths of 3,000 fish and threatened drinking water supplies’, while HWFRS described the fire as two of the ‘biggest firefighting operations it had ever had to deal with’. The company had no buildings


insurance after the first fire, and went into administration in September 2013, forcing the EA, HWFRS, Wyre Forest District Council and Worcester County Council to spend ‘thousands of pounds’ to demolish the building, as well the costs to extinguish the fire and control pollution ‘until the site was eventually sold’. At Worcester Crown Court,


Judge Cartwright found both Mr Lawrence and Mr Gibson to have been ‘negligent’ ahead of the 2012 fire, and that before the 2013 fire both ‘had ignored warnings even from their own employees’ about environmental risks. Mr Lawrence had ‘acted recklessly given that in his position the waste was “before his eyes”’, while Mr Gibson had ‘continued to act in a negligent manner’ as well as continuing to ‘encourage customers to send their waste to the site’. In mitigation, it was noted that both men had pleaded guilty


and ‘were of good character, with no previous convictions’, with the court categorising the pollution incident via its sentencing guidelines as ‘being at the highest level’. Mr Lawrence, the company’s operations director and the designated technically competent manager, was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment, suspended for two years, and ordered to complete 180 hours of unpaid work. In turn, Mr Gibson – the


company chairman and sales director – was sentenced to four and a half months’ imprisonment, suspended for two years, and ordered to complete 90 hours of unpaid work. An EA spokesperson commented: ‘These directors operated their waste recycling facility in a way that blighted the community with flies, vermin and odour, and put people’s health and businesses at risk by not adequately assessing and controlling the risks of fire. ‘They continued to operate with


flagrant disregard after the first fire with no insurance and no fund set aside to manage these risks, leaving the taxpayer to pick up the bill when an incident occurred and creating misery for their neighbours. We have pursued this case on behalf of the community and multi-agency partners. These directors now have criminal records as a result of the environmental offences they committed and have to payback the community through unpaid work orders.’


www.frmjournal.com DECEMBER 2019/JANUARY 2020 15


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