Skip hire firm fined £30,000 for breaching waste management licence

A Midlands skip hire company has been fined £30,000 for breaching its waste management licence. 

Thandi Skips Limited of Smethwick pleaded guilty at West Bromwich Magistrates Court to eight charges relating to breaches of a waste management licence and operating without a waste management licence over a period of a year.  Director Amardeep Thandi pleaded guilty to one offence and Mibbo Thandi, company secretary, pleaded guilty to seven offences. The charges were brought by the Environment Agency under section 33 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. 

Thandi Skips Limited were fined £30,000 and ordered to pay costs of £4,187.   The company was also ordered to pay £4,877 compensation for lost income to the Environment Agency. The court was told that the business, which was operated from a licensed site in Ladywood, Birminghamm failed repeatedly to comply with conditions in its licence relating to the quantity of waste allowed to be held. Following the company’s failure to respond to notices requiring compliance with the licence, the Environment Agency suspended the licence. 

The company continued to tip waste at the site and in late 2006 the company vacated the site.  Environment Agency officers visited a site in Alma Street in August 2006 and found that Thandi Skips Limited were depositing, treating and disposing of waste at this site also.  Environment Agency officers informed Thandi that he would need a licence if he was to continue operating and that operations must stop until the licence was granted.  Environment Agency officers again visited the Alma Street site in November 2006  and found that waste depositing, sorting and storing operations had resumed.  

On 27 March 2007, an Environment Agency officer observed that further waste was being deposited onto the site. 

Speaking after the case, Mike White, an Environment Agency officer involved in the investigation said:  

“If you want to deposit, keep, treat or dispose of waste you must get a Waste Management Licence from the Environment Agency.  The Licence contains conditions that must be complied with to ensure that the activity does not pollute the environment, cause harm to human health or serious detriment to local amenities. The Environment Agency will continue to seek out and take enforcement against unlicensed waste management activities.” 

In mitigation, the company stated they had no previous convictions, were sorry for what they had done and would not be doing it again. At the time of the offences there were business pressures which led to the commission of the offences.