Routine complaints about flies in a seaside town unearthed a vast cavern of illegally-stored waste.
No wonder the flies, as well as rats, were interested. David Weeks and Lee Brookes had built up a massive stockpile of rubbish, neatly packaged in black plastic.
The Environment Agency prosecuted the pair, resulting in suspended prison sentences totalling 20 months between them for filling a Margate warehouse with the waste.
It was spring 2017. As the weather warmed up, frustrated residents rang the local council to report swarms of flies close to an anonymous building.
Officials at Thanet District Council contacted the Environment Agency, which began an investigation. It discovered the illegal storage of thousands of bales of household and construction waste inside the building, unit P, on the Westwood Business Park.
Baled waste stored inside unit P before the fire.
A director of Devon-based DW Land Ltd, Weeks signed a one-year lease with the building’s owners at the start of 2017.
Lorry after lorry dumped waste
But no sooner was the ink dry on the lease that lorry after lorry began arriving in Margate from across the home counties – a procession of 220 vehicles over three months, offloading 6,000 blocks of waste and placed in the building.
Totnes businessman Weeks employed Brookes’ firm, OMC Outdoor Maintenance Company, of Whitworth, in Lancashire, to secure and manage unit P. Weeks told the Environment Agency he was the agent for two companies wanting the site for an energy-from-waste plant.
Judge Simon Taylor KC heard the waste had left legal sites in Hampshire and Hertfordshire, bound for the Kent coast, to be stored inside the building, but outside the law. Neither Brookes nor Weeks obtained an environmental permit for the storage of waste.
Risk became reality when building went up in flames
Matt Higginson, environment manager for the Environment Agency in Kent, said:
Weeks and Brookes profited financially from payments made to the sites where the waste originated and from its storage in Kent.
Not getting an environmental permit for the building, avoiding the cost and requirements of getting one, Weeks and Brookes gave themselves an unfair advantage over legitimate waste operators
A permit for the site would have required a plan to manage the risk of fire. Risk became reality when the building went up in flames. The disruption for local people went on for almost a month.
This case proves you must use firms authorised to take away your waste. Check the register of waste carriers’ licences on gov.uk.
Throughout 2017 and 2018, Weeks and Brookes gave the Environment Agency several excuses as to why they couldn’t clear the waste from the building.
On 18 September that year, the building caught fire. Kent Fire and Rescue Service fought the blaze for 25 days. At its peak, rubbish burst out of the packaging. Although no cause for the fire has ever been found, roads and businesses had to close, and the disruption led to operations cancelled at the local hospital.
View of fire-ravaged unit P at Westwood Business Park in Margate.
It was only a year later, towards the end of 2019, and almost three years after the first delivery of rubbish, what waste survived the fire was finally removed by the battered building’s new owner.
Weeks and Brookes gave scant assistance to the Environment Agency’s investigation. Even after the fire, the pair kept a very low profile.
David Weeks, 55, of School Hill, Totnes, Devon, was sentenced to 16 months in prison, suspended for two years. He also to pay £5,000 in costs, and a victim surcharge of £140.
Judge Taylor also gave Weeks 150 hours unpaid work and 20 hours of rehabilitation activity aimed at preventing him from reoffending. He’ll have to wear an electronic tag to monitor his daytime movements for the next two months.
Lee Brookes, of Tonacliffe Way, Whitworth, Lancashire, received a sentence of four months in prison, suspended for a year. He was also given 80 hours of unpaid work and the same 20 hours of rehabilitation programme. The court also ordered the 49-year-old to pay costs of £1,000 and a £115 victim surcharge.
At the hearing on 21 January, the court was told Weeks was fined almost £10,000 seven years ago for his part in the management of a site in Plymouth where 13,000 tonnes of wood was stored illegally.
The two men pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to knowing their respective companies, DW Land and OMC Maintenance, ran the waste operation in Margate without an environmental permit between 13 January 2017 and 22 August 2019, against regulation 12 (1)(a) of the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016.
DW Land Ltd, of Paignton Road, Stoke Gabriel, Totnes, Devon, and OMC Outdoor Maintenance Company Ltd, also of Tonacliffe Way, Whitworth, Lancashire, are no longer trading.
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