A businessman from Northfleet has been ordered to pay almost £50,000 in compensation for fly-tipping in Higham.
Earlier this month at Sevenoaks Magistrates Court, Prabhdeep Cheema, 22, from Painters Ash Lane, Northfleet, pleaded guilty to an offence under Section 34 of The Environmental Protection Act 1990 of failing in his duty of care to ensure controlled waste was treated and disposed of correctly.
Cheema was fined £2,000 and ordered to pay costs of £1,350, a victim surcharge of £190, and full compensation of £48,981 to owner of the land on which the offence was committed.
In 2020 Cheema opened a waste processing business on an industrial estate in Canal Road, Higham. The Company, Hillcrest Aggregates, took hundreds of tons of mixed and often contaminated waste into its yard.
The owners of estate became concerned about the company’s activities and after Cheema was challenged by them, he arranged for the yard to be cleared.
However, he failed to supervise or manage the clearance and ignored evidence that his staff were fly-tipping the waste.
As a result, much of the waste was fly-tipped on land adjacent to a fishing lake next to the estate and nearby in Canal Road.
An investigation by Gravesham Borough Council’s Environmental Enforcement team found Cheema was unlicensed to transport or process waste and had no documentation relating to the transfer or processing of it.
The court agreed his actions and failures resulted in a substantial unlawful deposit of waste, which posed a serious risk to the local environment.
In addition the landowner faced substantial clear up costs.
After the court hearing, Cllr Shane Mochrie-Cox, Gravesham Borough Council’s Cabinet Member for Community and Leisure, said the outcome should serve as a reminder that individuals can be held responsible for fly-tipping offences even if they have not dumped the waste themselves.
He said: “Cheema was ultimately responsible for what happened to a substantial amount of waste, which was dumped with no regard to the local environment or the cost and inconvenience to the landowner.
“It’s only through a degree of good luck that we didn’t find ourselves having to deal with a devastating contamination of the fishing lake.
“It’s unusual in cases such as this for the courts to order the defendant to pay an affected landowner full compensation, which reflects the level of contamination suffered and the expense the victim faced.
“I hope that the courts hearing future cases follow this excellent example so that private landowners can be assured that the whole system, from the council to the courts, to get the right results for them.
“We have worked hard to educate businesses and residents of their responsibility to ensure their waste is being disposed of legally by those with the necessary documentation that allows them to do so.
“This case should reinforce the fact that we will not hesitate to investigate and prosecute those who ignore that advice, and will always ask the courts to exercise the full range of measures available to them.
“We do not tolerate fly-tipping in Gravesham and continue to investigate and take action, including prosecutions such as this, against those responsible for it.”