A developer and a Brotherton man were fined a total £1,500 at Selby Magistrates after pleading guilty to depositing asbestos on land without a licence.

Whinro Ltd of Church Street, Great Gransden, Cambridgeshire and Keith Rotherforth, of Church Street, Brotherton, were also ordered to pay costs of £1,250 and £750 respectively to the Environment Agency, who brought the case.

Jill Fogg prosecuting for the Environment Agency told the court how officers responded to a call alleging that asbestos had been buried at land known as Bunkers Hill at Brotherton.

Environment officers attended the scene and saw a building site with an area which looked to have been cleared. There were three piles of wood, soil and rubble and another three piles of green waste, wood and general waste including plastic.

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Officers suspected that this waste was going to be burned, but the site did not hold a licence to burn waste.

They then found an area of ground by a wall containing demolition rubble, which also appeared to contain asbestos sheeting. Mr Rotherford appeared on site and officers explained why they were there. He said he had demolished a building on site and had put the material in the ground and had buried it as he thought this was the safest thing to do.

Investigations revealed that the land was owned by Whinro Ltd. Mr Craig Sutcliffe at the company was interviewed about its involvement in what had gone on.

The company is a developer and it had bought the land to build houses on. Mr Rotherford was Whinro Ltd’s contractor, who gave a ‘free reign’ to do whatever he felt appropriate on the site.

No environmental survey was carried out on the site when they purchased it, and they had no procedures or systems in place for disposal of waste from the sites, and were not aware of any waste regulations.

Environment agency officers returned to the site in March 2007 and saw seven bagged sheets of asbestos and 16-20 bags of broken asbestos which was ready to be cleared from the site. This asbestos waste was later disposed of correctly.

In mitigation, Whinro Ltd accepted that they had not had appropriate procedures in place, they had co-operated with the Environment Agency’s investigation and made no attempt to hide its conduct.

(JM/SP)