The owner of a car breaking business in Guildford has been sentenced to 10 months in prison (suspended for two years) and ordered to pay £34,800 after pleading guilty to charges of illegal waste activity.

William Creasey was summoned to Guildford Crown Court after the Environment Agency (EA) brought to light illegal waste activity at his car breaking site in South Godstone, Surrey. He was charged with operating a waste facility without the correct permits in a manner ‘likely to cause pollution’

Case details

Investigations began in 2010 after a series of complaints from residents near the Brickhouse Lane site prompted officers from the EA to visit the car breaking company operating as J T Recovery Services.

Officers found that Creasey was using the site to illegally burn waste and store skips full of damaged car parts, tyres and waste metal. The site also included a number of end-of-life cars, which Creasey claimed were used by his grandson for ‘banger racing’. Although Creasey was warned that he was operating the site without the relevant environmental permits, two years later the EA found a fire burning in a 40-yard skip close to the edge of the site.

Further to this, despite ‘regular warnings’ from the EA, Creasey continued to operate without the necessary permits, and between 19 March 2010 and 23 January 2013 officers recorded 46 cases of illegal waste activity.

Creasey was eventually served with a court warrant on 23 January 2013. A search of the site found approximately nine skips filled with broken car parts, as well as vehicle parts littering the yard; a military style vehicle full of used car parts; old skips containing remnants of burnt waste; and a sheen of oil that covered much of the yard and escaped into nearby watercourses.

As such, Guildford Crown Court sentenced Creasey to 10 months in prison for breaching the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2010 and 10 months for breaching the Environmental Protection Act 1990 (to run concurrently), fined him £7500 for each offence, and ordered him to pay £19800 in costs.

“A real risk to the local environment”

Speaking after the hearing, Andrew Pearce, Environment Agency Area Manager, said: “It’s cases like this that demonstrate how waste crime can undermine legitimate businesses. Mr. Creasey generated savings by dealing with waste inappropriately, but his site posed a real risk to the local environment.

“We worked with Mr. Creasey and agreed actions with him to improve the situation at his site, but little action was taken. In cases like this where individuals consistently operate illegally, the Environment Agency has no hesitation in prosecuting.”

Waste criminals are increasingly facing more severe sentences as pressure is put on judges to issue harsher penalties for waste crime. Last week, a 29-year old man was sentenced to nine months in prison for operating an illegal waste disposal site out of an industrial estate in Peterborough.

Find out more about how the Environment Agency tackles waste crime.