Two fly-tippers who ran a thriving business dumping more than 14,000 tonnes of waste at sites around London were jailed this month for a total of three years. Between 1 January 2003 and 6 June 2004, James Kelleher and Patrick Anderson made £1.2 million running a "widescale operation to unlawfully deposit waste material" which included soil, rubble, concrete and other construction waste.
Inner London Crown Court heard how the pair hired workers in high-visibility jackets, used a fleet of lorries and put up health and safety signs to disguise their operations. An empty site would be chosen and the locks broken and replaced. Their employees were trained to hand out a bogus mobile number and claim they had "authority from the council" when questioned by officials. The operation would then quickly shut down and the vehicles disappear.
Judge Nicholas Philpot said the case was an extreme example of fly-tipping as a commercial enterprise. "At one end fly-tipping involves an old mattress being left on a pavement in the suburbs or a vanload of rubble being dumped in a hedge. But this was at the other end where fly-tipping had become an almost industrialised, certainly commercial operation."
Arwyn Jones, National Enforcement Service Manager for the Environment Agency commented, "This case highlights how organised criminals are involved in blighting our environment and how the Agency is determined to tackle this kind of serious crime."
