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22
May
Ripon woman sentenced after nine-day fire at waste storage site
A Ripon woman, who repeatedly ignored advice on waste storage, has been handed a suspended prison sentence after a site she managed caught fire.
Laura Hepburn, 44, of Stonebridgegate, was one of six defendants sentenced at Teesside Crown Court on Monday (May 20).
Sentencing included prison sentences spanning 6.5 years and fines totalling more than £103,000.
However, Hepburn was spared jail when she was sentenced to a two-year suspended sentence and ordered to do 150 hours of unpaid community work.
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Hepburn was employed by Selective Environmental Solutions (SESL), a waste storage company that ran a waste site at Liverton, near Loftus in North Yorkshire.
The Environment Agency got involved after discovering the site had exceeded its storage exemption limit of 500 tonnes.
SESL operated at the site between December 2018 and February 2019, where Hepburn worked alongside director Jonathan Waldron and manager Jonathan Guy Brudenell.
The firm registered several waste exemptions, which allow low level waste activity that does not require an environmental permit.
But shortly after the investigation, the defendants reportedly fell out and Hepburn set up Greenology (Liverton) Ltd which operated at the same site in February 2019.
Brudenell, who continued in a managerial role, used the alias Guy Barker at the time, due to a bankruptcy restriction which prohibited him from running a company as a result of multiple fraud offences.
The Environment Agency said Hepburn knew about the fake name while working together.
Despite the Environment Agency discovering waste had increased at the site and advising Hepburn to create fire breaks – used to reduce the risk or spread of fire – she admitted the firm had imported an additional 2,000 tonnes of waste by September 5, 2019.
Waste at Greenology (Liverton) Ltd's site.
The Environment Agency issued an enforcement notice to remove the waste and continued to advise on creating fire breaks.
However, by January 2020 the site had breached its exemption limit by almost three times the 500-tonne limit.
A nine-day fire broke out on April 5, 2020, which spread through the bales of plastic waste and the building, and ultimately destroyed the site.
The fire at Greenology (Liverton) Ltd.
Teesside tyre waste
But Hepburn’s offences did not stop there.
In February 2020, just before the fire in Liverton, Hepburn also set up Greenology (Teesside) Ltd, in Middlesborough, which stored disused tyres.
However, an Environment Agency inspection in June 2021 revealed the number of tyres at the site exceeded the firm’s waste exemption limit and posed a “significant fire risk”.
The body said Hepburn repeatedly claimed a pyrolysis plant (used to incinerate waste tyres) would be installed at the site, adding a permit had been obtained from Middlesborough Council to do so.
But despite receiving large sums of money from business partners to carry out the venture, the plant was never built, and the excess volumes of waste tyres continued to grow.
Waste tyres at Greenology (Teesside) Ltd.
The mountain of waste posed a threat to the environment and the Environment Agency de-registered all of Greenology Teesside Ltd's exemptions by October 2022.
Hepburn, who was notified of her prosecution for the Liverton site in 2021, later changed the Greenology Ltd company name to LM South Yorkshire Ltd.
Regarding the Liverton site, Hepburn was charged with two counts of operating a regulated facility, namely a waste storage site, for the storage and treatment pending recovery or disposal of waste plastics, otherwise than in accordance with an environmental permit, and as a director the offence was committed as a consequence of the defendant's consent, connivance or neglect.
She was also charged with three counts of Greenology (Teesside) Ltd treating, keeping or disposing of controlled waste in a manner likely to cause pollution of the environment or harm to human health, and as an officer of the body the offence was committed as a consequence of the defendant's consent, connivance or neglect.
Hepburn pleaded guilty to the charges.
Greenology (Liverton) Ltd was fined £69,000 and Greenology (Teesside) Ltd was fined £20,000.
SESL was fined £14,666. Former director Waldron was sentenced to 20 months in prison suspended for two years. He is required to be under supervised probation, complete a course of rehabilitation and 150 hours of unpaid work.
He was also ordered to pay £9,000 in costs.
Brudenell was jailed for two years and ten months.
'Complete disregard for environmental laws'
Gary Wallace, area environment manager for the Environment Agency in the north east, said:
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