The Environment Agency (EA) has suspended the environmental permit at a waste recycling plant on Shireoaks Road, Worksop, after the fourth fire in six months broke out at the site last week.

The permit for Nottinghamshire Recycling Ltd’s (NRL) plant has been suspended with ‘immediate effect’ due to the ongoing risk of serious pollution caused by fires on the site.

The EA said it had previously notified NRL of its concerns about the risk of fire on the Shireoaks Road site, and had issued the company with a compliance notice on 23 February, when the third fire since August 2013 broke out.

According to the EA, it considered the ‘site’s management systems, accident and incident management plans and procedures and security procedures’ to be ‘inadequate’ to prevent fires and the resulting pollution from them.

NRL was given until 17 March 2014 to comply with the notice; however, following the latest fire on Sunday (9 March), the EA decided that the ‘continued operation of this facility presents ongoing risk of serious pollution’.

As such, no waste can be accepted or processed on site until NRL has taken the required steps to ‘reduce the risk of serious pollution’. Once the EA is satisfied that these steps have been complied with, the permit will be reinstated.

Sharon Palmer, Environment Manager at the Environment Agency, said: “Minimising the impacts of pollution to the local community and environment is our main priority. The decision to suspend the Environmental Permit at this waste site shows that we will not hesitate to take enforcement action against operators who choose not to comply with their permit conditions and protect the local community.”

Calls for site closure

The revocation of NRL’s environmental permit for the Worksop site comes after the Member of Parliament for Bassetlaw in Nottinghamshire called for the recycling centre to close.

Speaking last month (after the third fire), Bassetlaw MP John Mann argued that the site should ‘shut down’ until someone ‘more competent in health and safety’ could be brought in to run it.

He said: “In America they use the three strikes and you are out rule. This needs to apply in this situation. Once is bad. Twice is unacceptable. Three times should see the plant being shut down and somebody else, more competent in health and safety, being brought in to run it.

“We need immediate enforcement action by the Environment Agency to make this happen. In my view, there is no other acceptable solution.”

NRL told Resource at the time that it believed the last fire was caused by arson.

Since making this statement, however, the recycling centre has been affected by a fourth fire.

Following this latest fire, Bassetlaw Councillor David Robert Pressley said that although the council doesn’t want the “people who are employed at the site to lose their jobs”, he thought that “action need[ed] to be taken immediately”.

He added: “The fires have caused considerable problems for the residents of Bassetlaw over the last six months and action was needed to protect the public.

“I believe that if the site was run efficiently and inspected regularly by the relevant authorities the problems would not have occurred and could be an asset to the community.”

Resource contacted NRL for a response, but has not yet received an answer.