Undercover surveillance by the Environment Agency has helped to expose the activities of a married couple running an illegal waste site.
Nicholas Simon Panks was ordered at Norwich Crown Court to hand over proceeds worth £108,000 from his activities, plus £7,821 in costs, under the Proceeds of Crime Act and to carry out 120 hours of unpaid community work.
Evidence was gathered between December 2011 and June 2012 from King's Lynn Skips at Moat Farm. The site was operated by Panks, who admitted carrying out waste operations including the deposit, treatment, storage and disposal of waste without an environmental permit. He was helped by his wife, Susan Panks, who admitted sorting waste and setting fire to a skip of waste. She was fined £500, along with £500 costs.
The investigation began after a police helicopter showed several skips full of waste being stored at Moat Farm in December 2011. An Agency officer made a pre-arranged visit to the site in February 2012, but found hardly any waste. A follow up letter was sent to him explaining the rules and regulations of running a waste management facility. Covert surveillance in April and May 2012 however, showed that waste was systematically being tipped, sorted and burned at the site. On 20 June 2012, Agency officers and Norfolk Police visited Moat Farm, where they found skips of waste and waste transfer notes which recorded 34 loads collected by King's Lynn Skips between 4 April 2011 and 5 April 2012.
Nicholas Panks was arrested and claimed he was aware he should not take waste back to Moat Farm to be sorted. He also claimed he had burned only small amounts of his own waste. Burning waste of the types found could harm human health or pollute the environment. Moat Farm is within 150 metres of a residential property and is in open countryside with many small watercourses.
The site has now been cleared.
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