In June 2010 lawyer Kate Levy asked a doctor to change the details about the death of 20-year-old John Moore-Robinson, who had died after a mountain bike accident on Cannock Chase in 2006.

Taken to Stafford Hospital an x-ray revealed Mr Moore-Robinson had broken ribs. However, even though he was vomiting and in agony, a junior doctor failed to realise his spleen was ruptured.

Sent home with painkillers, Mr Moore-Robinson died several hours later.

Consultant Ivan Phair subsequently produced a report for the coroner stating that in his opinion the death was “avoidable” and there was “a high probability that the level of care delivered was negligent”.

At the time Ms Levy was a board secretary and head of legal services at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust.

After reading Mr Phair’s report she sent him a memo, urging him to “avoid stressing possible failures on the part of the trust” which, she said, might cause further distress to the family and lead to adverse publicity.

However, after a Sunday newspaper revealed details of the alleged attempted cover-up two years ago, Ms Levy was first suspended and then sacked.

Losing an appeal against her dismissal, Ms Levy then elected to take the Trust to an employment tribunal, arguing that her guiding principal had always been to act in the best interests of her employer.

The Trust has now conceded she was wrongfully and unfairly dismissed.

Ms Levy has been awarded £103,000 in compensation. She said:

“I have always maintained that my actions were entirely consistent with my duties as a lawyer, and that I was not in breach of contract or otherwise guilty of any misconduct.”

Mr Moore-Robinson’s father, Frank, condemned the award as “morally criminal”.

As far as traffic warden Hakim Berkani was concerned, he “always tried to do the correct, legal and decent thing by motorists and residents”.

And that, he told an employment tribunal in Holborn, did not include meeting his employer NSL’s secret quota scheme requiring him to issue an “absolute minimum” of 10 tickets a day.

Wardens who failed to do so, he said, were disciplined, while one colleague, who issued 35 tickets in a single shift, was cited by his bosses as an “excellent example”.

45-year-old Mr Berkani claimed he was harassed and finally dismissed by his bosses at NSL in February 2011, after three years service, because he preferred to warn motorists that they were parked illegally, rather than simply sticking a ticket on their windscreens.

The father of two, who was sacked for gross misconduct, was backed by residents and traders in his claim.

NSL is the largest employer of parking wardens in the UK, providing on-street parking enforcement for more than 60 councils, including Kensington and Chelsea.

In his judgement judge Jeremy Burns ruled Mr Berkani was unfairly dismissed for his “opposition to the respondent’s clandestine quota system” and his GMB trade union activities.

“The managers,” said the judge, “took the view that a minimum number of PCNs should be issued, and ten per shift was frequently mentioned as an absolute minimum.”

It is illegal to set minimum quotas of parking tickets.

“We accept the claimant’s evidence that the managers clearly wanted more rather than less PCNs to be issued,” the judge continued.

He cited an email from Emma Collins, a regional manager with NSL, which read:

“There are still significant numbers of people issuing at a rate of below 9 per hour... we should not feel uncomfortable to use the disciplinary process.”

The judge said both Andy Dunbar and Stephen Rowland, two of Mr Berkani’s bosses, “saw the claimant as a trouble-maker because he had refused to comply with the clandestine quota system”.

As a result: “These managers decided to get rid of the claimant and schemed to do so by trumping up various disciplinary charges.”

Damages for Mr Berkani, who wants his job back, are to decide at a hearing at the end of February.

NSL denied setting quotas, and said it was “extremely disappointed” by the ruling and was considering its options.

Dr Andrew Faulkner, the tribunal accepted, had been “subjected to a barrage of shouting and verbal abuse”, and “it was made clear to him that he was a subordinate who had stepped out of line”.

At the time Dr Faulkner was a project engineer and team leader at the University of Manchester’s Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, working on the Square Kilometre Array, a £1.3 billion project to build the most powerful radio telescope in the world.

His line manager was Professor Peter Wilkinson.

By 2007 Professor Wilkinson was concerned that Dr Faulkner was taking too many decisions by himself, and there was further disagreement when Dr Faulkner put forward proposals that would have sidelined future SKA research at Manchester in favour of work at the University of Cambridge.

Then, on 4 December 2007, Professor Wilkinson and Dr Faulkner met prior to a crucial funding meeting to discuss the “communications fracture”.

Following the arrival of Mohamed Missous, professor of semiconductor material and devices at Manchester, and Lucio Piccirillo, professor of radio astronomy at the University, that meeting was transformed in to an “unpleasant” confrontation.

Over the course of three hours “feelings ran very high and some unnecessarily harsh remarks were made”, Professor Wilkinson told the tribunal.

Professor Missous, it was said, “conveyed his unhappiness” with Dr Faulkner’s proposals by “getting out of his chair and yelling at the claimant”.

Although Dr Faulkner subsequently complained of “informal bullying” by his line manager, and although that complaint was rejected, and despite apologies from both Professor Wilkinson and Professor Missous, Dr Faulkner continued with his complaint.

However an internal investigation concluded the confrontation was no more than “a one-off incident at which harsh words had been spoken in the heat of the moment.”

In July 2008 Dr Faulkner left his job after receiving an offer from Cambridge of a senior research associate post.

The meeting on 4 December, the tribunal ruled, was not “an argument between mature and passionate people which was clumsily handled”. Instead it was “a completely unacceptable meeting, which wholly overstepped the boundary...of proper behaviour”.

But, said the tribunal, Manchester had not subjected Dr Faulkner to any detriments through a breach of employment law, and rejected allegations of bullying made against Professor Wilkinson.

Following the ruling Dr Faulkner, who started working for the University of Manchester in 2004, declared:

“I have had to fight this at my own expense. I am glad the matter is finally resolved.”

A hearing to decide compensation is to take place on 14 February.

“The blacklisting conspiracy is a deliberate breach of human rights by big business,” complained construction worker Dave Smith.

“Human rights are supposed to apply to everyone but Carillion and their subsidiaries have got away with systematic abuse of power simply because I was an agency worker.”

The 46-year-old was speaking after an employment tribunal ruled in favour of Carillion (JM) Limited and its wholly owned subsidiary Schal International Limited, even though both companies had previously admitted supplying information and allegations, some of it unsubstantiated and damaging, to an organisation called The Consulting Association.

Their secret blacklist file contained Mr Smith’s photograph, address, National Insurance number, car registration, union credentials, and information on his family. It also contained details of occasions on which he had raised concerns about asbestos and poor toilet facilities on building sites.

Its existence was first revealed following a raid by the Information Commissioner’s Office on the premises of The Consulting Association early in 2009.

The West Midlands based firm was found to hold files on academics, lawyers, politicians and journalists, and operated a blacklist of employees considered “troublesome” by major employers in the construction industry.

Giving evidence at the tribunal Dave Clancy, investigations manager at the Information Commissioner’s Office and the man who led the raid on the company’s offices, said:

“There is information on the Consulting Association files that I believe could only be supplied by the Police or the security services.”

However, because Mr Smith was not a direct employee of either Carillion or Schal International, but instead worked through employment agencies, the tribunal decided he could not win his case against the companies.

Mr Smith is now considering whether to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights.

“Because of UK law,” he said, “agency workers don’t have rights. Carillion admitted blacklisting me, but claimed I wasn’t its employee.

“Trade union rights are human rights. We are going to fight in the courts and the building sites to get them.

“If the British justice system does not protect workers’ rights then we will be taking our case to Strasbourg.”

“We want to help employers and employees to help themselves,” explained Employment Relations Minister Edward Davey, announcing a pilot scheme for two regional mediation networks for small and medium-sized enterprises.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is to fund mediation training in Cambridge and Manchester later this year for employees from a group of 24 SMEs in each of the two areas.

A network of trained mediators will be available to provide mediation to other organisations in their respective network.

It is hoped this will help resolve workplace disputes long before they reach the employment tribunal stage.

“Last year there were a staggering 218,000 employment tribunal claims,” said Davey.

“And,” he went on, “individual claims cost each business on average £4,000 to defend themselves. It cost the taxpayer £84 million to run employment tribunals last year. The whole process ties businesses, their managers and HR professionals within these organisations, up in red tape.

“What can’t be accounted for is the hidden cost that a claim can involve for business – in particular SMEs – when the impact on other employees, productivity and stress is taken into account. And that is in addition to the disruption that dealing with a claim causes when every business is all hands to the pump at the moment.

“We have always said that employment tribunals should be a last resort for resolving workplace disputes,” Davey continued, adding:

“Mediation offers an informal method of dispute resolution and can be used at the point when problems first arise in the workplace.

“For both employers and employees it can mean avoiding the need for formal discipline and grievance procedures. And it can also mean avoiding the time-consuming, complex and often stressful employment tribunal process.”

The pilots will run for 12 months and, if successful, the Government will consider introducing them into other areas of England, Scotland and Wales.

On 28 January 2011 Steven Rowe was one of two shift operators working on a bar drawing line machine at the Clydach Vale premises of Allevard Springs Limited.

During his shift Mr Rowe noticed bars being extruded from the straightening machine, used to prepare steel bar lengths for processing in to springs, were not hitting a sensor, so causing problems with the alignment of the bars on the next part of the machine.

To prevent the bars jamming, Mr Rowe went through a sliding door and in to the machine’s enclosure. Once there, he would be able to adjust an air pressure regulator in order to correct the stop position of the bars against the sensor.

As he was doing so two steel bars, each 10.5mm in diameter and approximately two metres in length, shot out of the machine, piercing his right forearm.

Using his left arm, Mr Rowe then managed to deflect a number of other bars before his colleague was able to shut the machine down.

His right arm broken, Mr Rowe was taken to hospital, where he also needed 14 stitches to his left arm. A year later, he is still receiving outpatient treatment.

An HSE investigation revealed Allevard Springs had failed to ensure the exposure of a person to the risk of steel bars being ejected was adequately controlled, and that no measures were in place to prevent access to the machine while it was running.

Allevard Springs Limited, of Clydach Vale, Tonypandy, Rhondda Cynon Taf, pleaded guilty at Pontypridd Magistrates’ Court to contravening Regulation 12(1) of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998.

The company was fined £10,000 and ordered to pay costs of £9,786.60.

At some point between 1 December 2010 and 28 February 2011 self-employed gas engineer Christopher Clark commissioned a central heating system at a residential property in Upper Norwood Road, Cheltenham.

Having completed the work, 39-year-old told the resident he would return with the necessary paperwork.

However, when the householder noticed a gas leak and tried to contact him, he could not be contacted.

As a result the householder contacted Gas Safe Register, who visited the property.

A leak was discovered at the boiler connection and the supply had to be disconnected. A registered engineer then carried out remedial work to fix the problem.

The subsequent HSE investigation discovered Mr Clark had also carried out work for the same client at another property he owned in the town, on Fairfield Avenue, on 29 July 2010, while falsely claiming to be Gas Safe Registered.

Mr Clark, Cheltenham Magistrates’ Court was told, had been registered, but his registration had expired at the start of 2010, and he was therefore unable to carry out the work legally.

Christopher Clark, of Withybridge Gardens, Boddington, Cheltenham, pleaded guilty to breaching Regulations 3(3) and 3(7) of the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998.

He was fined £16,000 with £800 costs.

On 7 August 2009 a worker was mending a wire break in one of the four rotating blocks of a wire drawing machine belonging to Betafence Limited, of Shepcote Lane, Sheffield.

Each block had a moveable guard, fitted with an interlocking device to switch off power to the block should the guard be moved out of position.

As he tried to re-thread the block, the man needed to lean into the machine. His left arm was through the rotating block when the machine unexpectedly started to move.

He suffered a dislocated elbow, compound fractures to his lower arm, and had parts of his skin ripped off.

The worker, who asked not to be named, has since had three skin grafts and two metal plates fitted to his forearm. He no longer works for the company.

Sheffield Magistrates’ Court was told the interlock had failed to break the circuit and cut power to the block and, as the worker leaned into the machine to repair the wire, it was possible he inadvertently depressed the start or run switch.

The court heard that Betafence had a system for checking the guards on its machines, but that system did not include checking the functioning of interlock switches on moveable guards.

“This,” said HSE inspector Jill Thompson after the hearing, “is an example of how a simple failure of a safety switch can result in life-changing injuries.

“Had the company included safety switch checking as part of the guard checking system,” she added, “this incident would probably have been avoided.”

Magistrates were advised that Betafence, which operates in ten countries and employs 2,000 people worldwide, had previously been convicted in 2003 in a prosecution brought by HSE for a machinery safety incident in 2002.

The company, which traded as Bekaert Fencing Limited and Tinsley Wire Limited, had also been the subject of previous enforcement notices regarding the guarding of machines in 2003 and 2005, and had received several letters of advice about machinery guarding.

Betafence Limited, which has its headquarters in Belgium, was fined £12,000 and ordered to pay £3,762 costs for breaching Regulation 11(1) of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998.

In March 2007 Mark Thornton was killed when a mobile crane toppled over and crushed him.

Bryn Thomas Crane Hire Limited had supplied the crane.

But, before the case against the company could be heard in court, Bryn Thomas Crane Hire Limited went into administration, only to then be bought out by its directors, Dylan and Janus Thomas, and resume trading, using the same equipment, as Bryn Thomas Hire Limited.

Because the company was in administration, and despite being found guilty of serious health and safety failings that had contributed to Mr Thornton’s death, Bryn Thomas Crane Hire Limited was fined just £4,500.

The judge said the appropriate fine, had the company not been in administration, was £300,000.

Now Labour MP Luciana Berger, in whose Liverpool Wavertree constituency Mr Thornton died, is to table a 10 Minute Rule Bill in Parliament, calling for an amendment to the Health and Safety Act.

She wants the Health and Safety Executive to be able to apply to the courts for a freezing order to prevent a company voluntarily going into administration, following the death or serious injury of a worker.

She said:

“Companies whose actions result in the death of a worker must be forced to take responsibility. If passed, my Bill will ensure that companies can’t become phoenix firms to escape justice.”

The Bill will have its first reading on Wednesday 8th February.

Construction union UCATT is supporting her proposed Bill.

General Secretary Steve Murphy commented:

“Every workplace death is a tragedy, leaving a family devastated. It is simply appalling that companies can cheat justice following the death of a worker by using creative accountancy and get away completely scot free.”

In March 2011 environmental health officers from Peterborough City Council visited the Balti Hut take-away in Fitzwilliam Street.

There they found 61-year-old Francesco Vaira of Lincoln Road, Peterborough, carrying out work on the gas appliances.

Questioned, Mr Vaira claimed to be a registered gas fitter, informing officials of a previous project he had worked on in an attempt to convince them he was legitimate.

But, when the council checked his credentials and photograph on the Gas Safe Register website, they discovered Mr Vaira was posing as someone 30 years younger.

Nor was this a one-off incident. The self-employed plumber had carried out similar illegal work on a number of occasions.

As HSE Inspector Stephen Manley pointed out:

“Mr Vaira had been a registered engineer in 2005 so was well aware of his legal requirements. Trying to pose as someone 30 years younger was not only criminal but also silly as he was bound to be discovered.”

Pleading guilty to breaching Regulation 3(7) of the Gas Safety (Installation & Use) Regulations 1998 at Peterborough Magistrates' Court Mr Vaira was fined £3,000 and ordered to pay full costs of £2,094.40.

On 12 July 2011 24-year-old self-employed worker James Best, of Blisland in Cornwall, was helping to help remove fibre cement roof sheets from a shed at Park Farm, Washaway, near Bodmin.

As he was working on the roof, he fell through, landing on the concrete floor some 16 feet below.

He broke both his arm and jaw, and damaged an eye socket.

Speaking after the hearing at Bodmin Magistrates’ Court, HSE Inspector Georgina Speake said:

“There was no assessment of the state of the fragile roof and no written plan of works for the demolition, which is required by law.

“Martin Dairy did not provide proper equipment to do the job.

“Although there were crawling boards to allow safe access to the roof, these were not wide enough, increasing the risk of someone having to walk on the roof.

“There was also a complete absence of measures to reduce the risks of serious injuries in the event of a fall, such as safety nets or a crash deck.”

Martin Dairy Limited, of St Mabyn, pleaded guilty to a breach of Regulation 4 of the Work at Height Regulations 2005.

The firm was fined £4,000 and ordered to pay £1,033 in costs.

After the Royal Oak pub in Sandwich Road, Dover, was purchased for redevelopment in April 2010, Allan Smith of ATS Developments was engaged as the principal contractor to demolish the building.

Almost six months later, on 4 October 2010, a member of the public contacted the Health and Safety Executive to report children were playing on the site.

Three days later an HSE inspector arrived to find the pub partially demolished and the site unfenced, even though there was a public footpath running across the land.

The subsequent HSE investigation discovered no asbestos survey had been carried out before demolition commenced.

Even after a letter was sent to say a survey should be undertaken, this continued to be the case. An Improvement Notice was also served on 8 October 2010 about site security.

After the hearing at Canterbury Magistrates’ Court HSE Inspector Caroline Penwill commented:

“Mr Smith did not think about the risks he may have exposed his workers and members of the public to by cutting corners.

“The site was very insecure and exposed local children to the hazards of a building site.

“What makes this case all the more disappointing is that Mr Smith continued to work after the HSE advised him to undertake an asbestos survey.”

Allan Smith, from Bowling Green Lane, Deal, Kent, pleaded guilty to breaching both Regulation 5 of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2006 and Regulation 27(2) of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007.

He was fined £7,000 and ordered to pay costs of £7,000.

In March 2009 father-of-one Craig Page, of Islington, was working on a building site in Denning Road, Hampstead.

At the same time a mini-crawler crane was in the process of lifting a skip filled with liquid concrete onto the site.

But, when the skip overturned, the boom of the crane struck Mr Page, causing crush injuries to his upper body.

The 26-year-old died at the scene.

“From the start of this project,” HSE Inspector, Dominic Ellis told the Central Criminal Court, “the defendants failed to control even the most basic of risks on the construction site.

“The attempted lift of a liquid concrete load at a distance far in excess of the crane’s safe working parameters was wholly inappropriate.

“The potential for overturn in these circumstances is well known, entirely foreseeable and could have been simply prevented,” he explained.

Harris Calnan Construction Co. Limited, of Parmenter House, Tower Street, Winchester, pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 8(1)(c) of the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998.

The company was fined £80,000 and ordered to pay costs of £66,244.

The firm’s director, Neil Harris, of the same address, pleaded guilty by virtue of Section 37(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 to Regulation 8(1)(a) of the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998.

Mr Harris was fined £7,500 and ordered to pay costs of £25,000.

Having previously issued an Improvement Notice to Bristol-based building firm CR Construction (SW) Limited for failings on another of its sites in Thornbury, the Health and Safety Executive decided it should also inspect its site at Pembroke Road in Clifton, Bristol.

Arriving on 16 June 2011 they again found completely inadequate washing and bathroom facilities.

On further investigation, Bristol Magistrates’ Court was told, inspectors found the failings had been apparent at the Clifton site for the whole year it had existed.

Up to sixteen building people worked on site and facilities were way below the minimum requirements.

As HSE inspector Sue Adsett said after the hearing:

“Workers on sites such as these need access to clean and working toilets and hand washing facilities with hot and cold running water, soap and towels, as many materials used on such sites can cause skin problems.

“It is also a legal requirement to have a heated room on site where workers can change, rest, and make hot drinks and food if required.”

CR Construction (SW) Limited, of Tereslake Green, Bristol, pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 22(1)(c) of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007 under Section 33(1)(c) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974.

The company was fined £2,000 and ordered to pay costs of £2,014.

“The firm made a fundamental error by using a block grab to lift and move pallets,” declared HSE principal inspector Dave Redman, “and this resulted in the tragic death of a young man.

“This use was very clearly advised against by the manufacturers and the risks should have been understood by the company.

“Nevertheless,” he continued, “they allowed machinery to be used on their site which was totally unsuitable for the task. No assessment was made regarding the use of the grab and no instructions were given to the men who were operating it.”

Principal inspector Redman was speaking after Bradford Crown Court was told how a 23-year-old man from Keighley died from massive crush injuries.

In March 2007 Steven Allen was part of a team working for Skipton-based construction company JN Bentley on a building project for Bradford Council in Manningham. Their final job before the weekend was to move a pallet of 30 or so cement bags.

To do so, the workers used a block grab attached to an excavator.

As they were moving the load the bags suddenly fell two metres to the ground, but the pallet remained in the jaws of the block grab.

When it pivoted, Steven Allen took hold of it to pull it free.

As the pallet came away, the jaws dropped and clamped on his head, causing severe injuries. He died the following day.

J N Bentley Limited of Keighley Road, Skipton, North Yorkshire, had already pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. 

The court fined the company £106,250 and ordered it to pay costs of £90,000.

Steven’s mother Judith Allen said after the hearing:

“Whatever happens in court I know how unsafe working conditions led directly to my son’s death, and the ripple effect it has had on the lives of my family and the lives of his friends.

“The effects of Steven’s death continue to affect us all severely. Whatever fines are imposed it does not alter the fact that I have had my son taken from me, before he had chance to grow into the fine young man I know he would have become.

“This may be the end as far as prosecutions go, but our lives are blighted forever.”

When Environment Agency officers first visited a unit on the former GKN site in Sheepsbridge, Chesterfield, in October 2009, they discovered up to 4,000 tyres being stored there.

With no Environmental Permit in place, officers advised the operator, Andrew Revell, of Revco Recycling Limited, and his wife as to the permitting regulations.

They also told the couple to take immediate steps to reduce the amount of waste.

Finally, after several further fruitless visits, officers searched the premises in May 2010. They estimated there were around 25,000 tyres on the site.

They also found documents showing approximately 15,600 tyres had been received by the company between November 16 and December 11, 2009, as well as evidence that Revell had supplied a further 1,283 tyres to a company called KA Tyres.

Following the visit Revell told officers he had stopped collecting and baling waste tyres. However, he maintained, he was allowed to store the remaining tyres under an existing exemption agreement.

Officers next discovered Revco Recycling Limited was also using another unit on the Sheepsbridge site, which hadn’t been disclosed to them. A search of this property revealed around 400 bales of tyres inside, 260 bales outside and a further 160 loose tyres.

This brought the total of tyres amassed by Revell and his company to around 65,700, Derby Crown Court heard, along with some cement bonded asbestos boards.

Revell was subsequently arrested. Among documents found on the site were shipping notes for waste tyres from Ireland, as well as for the illegal export of tyres to Vietnam. These showed the company being paid around 40p per tyre. As it could export tyres at 3,000 per load, it was able to generate a profit of approximately £990 per container.

In mitigation the court was told Revell had spent over £30,000 to clear the site, and the profits he made were substantially less than the Environment Agency claimed, once running costs were taken in to account.

He was, he said, running the business to support his family, he had pleaded guilty, and he had no previous convictions.

Andrew Revell, aged 50, of The Green, Hasland, was sentenced to a 12 month prison sentence suspended for two years on each of five charges, ordered to do 200 hours unpaid work, and ordered to pay full court costs of £9,578.75.

On 29 September 2010 the Environment Agency first received a report that waste materials were being stored on a piece of land in the Doddington Heights area of Kiddiminster, managed by Gary Shorthouse.

Located on the side of Titterstone Clee Hill, parts of which are designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest, the site also lies on the boundary of the Shropshire Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Environment agency officers went to investigate on 13 October.

They found waste materials in skips and on the ground. Records showed there was no Environmental Permit for the site, but G R Shorthouse Limited, a registered skip hire company, was based there.

As an authorised representative of the company Mr Shorthouse was interviewed on 15 November 2010. He confirmed his directorship, that the company was a skip hire and transport business, that the company owned the waste-filled skips, and that there was no Environmental Permit in place.

Subsequently, between December 2010 and May 2011, officers made a series of further visits, regularly seeing waste in skips and on the ground.

Both verbal and written warnings were given to the company that waste could not be stored at the site and that it needed to be removed.

A final site visit on 5 August 2011 appeared to confirm the waste had finally been taken away.

During their investigation officers asked the company to provide Waste Transfer Notes showing the waste coming in and out of the site.

In response, G R Shorthouse Limited supplied 294 transfer notes for the period between 15 January 2009 and 17 December 2010. However many of these documents were not completed correctly.

After a hearing at Kidderminster Magistrates’ Court G R Shorthouse Limited was convicted in their absence of operating a regulated waste facility without an environmental permit, as well as of failing to ensure that Waste Transfer Notes were correctly completed on three separate occasions.

The first charge was brought under the Environmental Permitting Regulations 2010, the second under the Environmental Protection (Duty of Care) Regulations 1991 and the Environmental Protection Act 1990.

The company was fined a total of £20,000 and ordered to pay £4,410.90 costs, along with a £15 victim surcharge.

In the sixteen weeks from 24 August until 14 December 2009 Environment Agency officers visited the Swanley site of Bournewood Sand & Gravel on a number of occasions.

Lorry loads of contaminated waste were being accepted at the landfill site and, on one occasion, a major leak from an onsite diesel tank was spotted.

The leak had not been cleaned up, but instead left to sink in to the ground.

The combination of diesel and illegal waste had the potential to create a dangerous cocktail of substances, capable of contaminating groundwater beneath the site.

John Radclyffe, Environment Agency Pollution Prevention and Control Officer, commented:

“Sites such as this, operated in an irresponsible way, are dangerous. We witnessed numerous breaches of the permit in place to protect local people and the environment.

“When companies disregard their responsibilities, there can be a potentially devastating and long lasting effect on the area.

“Often it is the local community that is left with a dangerous and expensive mess to deal with.”

Bournewood Sand & Gravel Limited and one of its directors had already been successfully prosecuted in November 2006 for offences under the Pollution Prevention and Control Regulations 2000, for treating and disposing of wastes without a permit.

The District Judge at Hastings Crown Court concluded the company had shown a cavalier disregard for the regulations.

Bournewood Sand & Gravel Limited was fined a total of £10,000 and ordered to pay £36,000 costs.

Prosecuted in the latter half of 2010 for operating a waste facility without a permit and depositing a skip on a highway, Clifford Nicholls was sentenced in January 2011 to six months imprisonment, suspended for two years, and ordered to do 200 hours of unpaid work.

Environment Agency Officers visited the yard in Union Street, Wolverhampton, on 17 January 2011. They estimated around 300 cubic metres of soil and hardcore had been stockpiled, along with a smaller quantity of builders waste, both on the ground and in skips.

A court order was imposed, requiring Mr Nicholls to clear the site by 30 March 2011.

On 14 March 2011 a legal notice was sent to his home address, requiring him to provide copies of all waste transfer notes showing the movements of waste off site.

The deadline for compliance with this notice was 1 April 2011, Wolverhampton Magistrates’ Court was told, but the 53-year-old failed to provide any of the required information.

By 30 March only some of the waste had been removed. Mr Nicholls explained to officers he had no money left to complete the clearance operation.

On 30 April 2011 Mr Nicholls’ tenancy agreement was terminated, and he has not had access to the site since.

However, as this was after the expiration of the court order, the site should have already been clear. Instead waste spread onto land owned by Union Properties and Wolverhampton City Council, and possibly also into the margins of the canal area.

Because Mr Nicholls had completed his 200 hours of unpaid work in five months, an achievement the probation service described as exemplary, and all prosecution costs from his previous hearing had been paid in full and a large amount of the waste had been removed from the site, magistrates decided against sending Mr Nicholls to jail.

Instead, having now pleaded guilty to operating a regulated waste facility without a permit between 1 April and 30 April 2011 and failing to provide copies of waste transfer notes on 2 April 2011, Mr Nicholls was fined £10,000, and ordered to pay £2,597 in costs along with a £15 victim surcharge.

He was also ordered to undertake 40 hours of unpaid work, as the offence had been committed during the suspended sentence from his previous conviction.

On or around 21 February 2011 pig slurry escaped from a concrete drainage channel on a farm in Southolt, Suffolk.

It ran across a sloping yard and through holes in the bottom of a boundary wall and in to a stream that flows in to the River Dove.

Environment agency officers watched as a farm worker swept slurry and faeces from the yard at Sycamore Farm back in to the drainage channel.

The officers then discovered the pump employed to empty the channel was leaking, and the floor of the pump house was covered in 3 inches of black liquid.

Three weeks later slurry again escaped from the channel, but by now the holes in the wall had been bunged.

Bury St Edmunds Magistrates’ Court heard a biological survey showed that the pollution had virtually wiped out the invertebrate community for at least 460 metres downstream of the discharge.

The court was told a new employee, who had been left to manage the slurry drainage system, neither knew how to operate nor maintain it.

Routine checks were not being carried out, and there was no clear written procedure for emptying the channel or for dealing with any escape of slurry. 

Z Munter (Farms) Limited, who own Sycamore Farm, had committed two previous offences of a similar nature in 2000 and 2002.

The director of Z Munter (Farms), Mr Leonard Munter, admitted the pump may have broken due to bad frosts or, he said, an employee may have broken it by possibly taking a sledgehammer to it.

He added it was also possible the spill could have happened when a tractor pulled out of the pig sheds too quickly.

At the time of the pollution he had been away on holiday, and the farm manager was not there either.

Mr Munter acknowledged routine checks of the drainage system were not carried out, maintenance records were not kept, and no-one was specifically designated to carry out pump maintenance.

After pleading guilty to guilty to a breach of Regulation 12(1)(b) and Regulation 38(1)(a) of the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2010, Z Munter (Farms) Limited was fined £14,000 and ordered to pay £4,658 full costs.