Jail for prolific tyre dumper
Do not pass Go…it’s straight to jail for the man the Environment Agency has dubbed the “million tyre man.” The agency reports that Carl David Steele, operator of Lincolnshire-based FCM Logistics (Tyres) Ltd, received a 15 month sentence on November 7 after pleading guilty to six offences and two further offences on behalf of his company, which is now in liquidation. All charges relate to the illegal storage of hundreds of thousands of tyres at environmentally sensitive locations in Essex, Norfolk, Yorkshire, Worcestershire and Lincolnshire.
Lincoln Crown Court heard that Steele first attracted the Environment Agency’s attention after officers found over 3,000 tyres at his company’s Chapel Farm site in Deeping St Nicholas, near Spalding in Lincolnshire. During the investigation the number of tyres Steele was suspected of dumping rose to 200,000 and then more than 400,000. He had permission to store just 6,000 tyres at the site. Investigators then uncovered four other storage locations. All in all, Steele was accused of dumping more than 800,000 tyres.
The Environment Agency said that court action against Steele commenced after he repeatedly ignored advice to remove tyres from his premises and instead continued to add to the number. Environment Agency officer Graham Cantellow tried to work with the site for more than nine months to bring it under environmental regulations but repeated attempts to get Steele to remove tyres from the site were ignored.
Ruby Hamid, prosecuting for the Environment Agency, stated that a number of waste tyre businesses had operated from Chapel Farm since December 2008; Steele had either been a director, or claimed to be a director or an employee of all those businesses. She explained that the farm had exemptions allowing for some tyres to be kept on-site in bales, and the company was also allowed to bale or store a limited number of tyres. Instead of adhering to this retrained quantity, the number of tyres at Chapel Farm kept on rising – when Cantellow visited the site in March 2009 he found 3,000 tyres there and Steele was advised to remove them, yet over the next few months that number grew and grew until in June 2010 there were more than 412,600 tyres. Cantellow described having seen containers full of tyres, large piles of baled tyres and loose tyres on the ground and on pallets during numerous visits over many months.
According to Hamid, the Environment Agency officer was ‘shocked’ at the number of tyres found at the Lincolnshire site, particularly as Steele had twice been warned in the previous four months. In November 2010 the company was told to reduce the number of tyres on site to 1,000 by 18 December and provide the Environment Agency with written proof of their legitimate disposal. Over the next two months regular waste transfer notes were supplied by Steele but in January there were still thousands of tyres on site. Steele told the Agency that he needed to keep taking in tyres to stay in business. He had 2,646 customers nationwide and needed a permit to handle more than 1,000 tyres.
Hamid told the court that concerns exist over potential fire risks posed by the quantity, storage and location of the tyres at the various sites Steele used, as well as threats to water quality in nearby rivers that she said have the potential to cause “a high degree of harm to human health and pollution to the environment.”
Judge Sean Morris of the Lincoln Crown Court noted that tyres are big business and Steele was motivated by “the long term prospect of big money.” Upon sentencing Steele, he stated: “You have left behind a horrendous mess.” Morris added that a prison sentence was needed as a deterrent to others and ignoring the advice of the Environment Agency made the case very serious.
After the hearing, Graham Cantellow commented: “Waste tyre stockpiles are known to present a fire risk. If waste tyres are set on fire, the environmental harm can be significant. More and more tyres were brought onto the land at Deeping St Nicholas for months after Mr. Steele was told he and his company were committing an offence. He also continued to deposit waste tyres on a huge scale at four other illegal sites in the UK, whilst being prosecuted for the same offences at the Deeping St Nicholas site revealing, at worst, utter contempt for the legislation and, at best, a disregard for the legislation.
“Illegal operators have an unfair advantage in the market and the defendants admitted they were undercutting other legitimate businesses to obtain customers,” Cantellow added.
A hearing next year will decide whether proceeds made from the crimes should be confiscated from Steele.
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