A father and son who ran waste management business DepotHire Ltd have been ordered to pay a total of £248,000 after being convicted of waste crime offences.

Frank Flannigan Junior, 45, and his father Frances Clavering Flannigan, 78, were sentenced at Newcastle Crown Court last week (17 January) after being found guilty of operating a skip hire business in Berwick-upon-Tweed without the proper permits.

The case centred on an Environment Agency (EA) investigation from 2008, which revealed that waste was being stored and sorted at two locations without the adequate legal permits.

According to the EA, at the first site owned by Frances Flannigan (at Etal Road, Tweedmouth), around 80 skip containers were being used to store ‘soils, metals, plastics and wood’, while there were ‘36 vehicles in various states of disrepair’, containing fluids such as oil and fuel.

At the second site, at Old Dove’s Yard, in Berwick-upon-Tweed, skips were found containing ‘scrap metal, broken asbestos roofing, garden waste’, along with ‘nine scrap vehicles’.

Although DepotHire Ltd was permitted to transport asbestos, it was not permitted to take it to its waste transfer stations, nor to Old Dove’s Yard for storage.

The company and Frank Flannigan Junior, Director of DepotHire, were also convicted of depositing mixed waste, including ‘plastic, paper, metal, wood, road signs, carpet, empty paint tins and a microwave oven’ at a farm near Berwick-upon-Tweed between January 2008 and January 2009.

Frank Flannigan Junior was fined £12,000 for three waste crime offences, ordered to pay £10,000 in costs, and told to surrender £50,000 in profits under the Proceeds of Crime Act. He has six months to pay the full amount, or could face an 18-month jail term.

The company itself was fined a total of £36,000 for three similar offences and was ordered to pay £80,000 in costs, and £50,000 in proceeds of crime.

Francis Clavering Flannigan, who owned the company before he sold it to his son, was handed a 12-month conditional discharge for one offence, with an order to pay £10,000 in costs.

Speaking after the sentencing, David Edwardson, Environmental Crime Team Leader at the Environment Agency, said: “The illegal disposal of waste is a crime that undermines legitimate business and the investment and economic growth that goes with it. Waste crime also damages the environment and can cause problems for local communities.

“This investigation shows that we are determined to tackle this problem and where people flout the law we will take action against them. Those who have committed waste crimes will not only face a monetary punishment in the way of a fine, we will also seek to seize the profits of their operation through the Proceeds of Crime Act.

“Companies and individuals have a duty of care to ensure their waste is managed properly and any waste management activity is lawfully carried out. We can provide advice and guidance to people on this.

“People with information about waste crime can report it by calling our incident hotline [on] 0800 807060. Or if you want to report information anonymously call CrimeStoppers on 0800 555111.”

Find out more about how the Environment Agency cracks down on waste crime.