Tottenham-based Redcorn Ltd has provided abandoned vehicle removal services for 15 local authorities – including the London boroughs of Camden, Haringey, Islington and Kensington & Chelsea.
 Redcorn's site in Tottenham, as photographed by Environment Agency officers, did not comply with conditions of its waste management licence |
The company claims to disposes of 20,000 vehicles every year at its site in the White Hart Lane area.
Redcorn company director Steven Thompson pleaded guilty before magistrates in Haringey yesterday to four offences under the Environment Protection Act 1990. His company pleaded guilty to an additional three offences.
Mr Thompson was fined 24,000 and his company 22,000, and ordered to pay costs of 4,000.
ELV Regulations
Since early 2004, companies dismantling end-of-life vehicles have been required by the ELV Regulations to hold a waste management licence. The licence requires companies to treat and store ELVs in certain conditions that do not harm the environment (see letsrecycle.com story).
Haringey magistrates were told yesterday that Redcorn was given a licence, but until July 2005 had made “little effort” to meet the conditions of that licence.
The company had its licence suspended on July 1, 2005, after warnings from the Environment Agency. Despite this licence suspension, Redcorn went on accepting and treating waste at the site illegally until July 5, when improvements began to be made.
Guilty
Commenting after the hearing, Agency investigating officer Iain Regan said: “Unfortunately Mr Thompson and Redcorn were more interested continuing their business rather than complying with the law.
“By failing to comply with the requirements of its waste management licence, operating while its licence was suspended, conducting its business in a manner which could have caused pollution, and subsequently ignoring our advice, this company has found itself hauled before the courts and rightly handed a heavy fine,” Mr Regan said.
“Serious non-compliances”
Redcorn Ltd is accredited with both the Motor Vehicle Dismantlers' Association and the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management.
Magistrates were told yesterday that from 2003 to 2005, “serious non-compliances” with the firm's licence conditions included waste vehicles being dismantled “with fluids leaking to the ground in an area without an impermeable surface”. There were also defects in the site's drainage system and a “large accumulation of oil and water, which was leaking through defects in the boundary wall and polluting an adjacent property”.
Mr Regan explained: “Scrap motor vehicles, which we call End of Life Vehicles are classified as hazardous waste because of the risks they pose to human health and the environment.”
| Related links: |
He said Redcorn had only stopped treating vehicles because its local authority customers had stopped supplying the firm with vehicles.
“Despite having their licence suspended, Mr Thompson and Redcorn deliberately chose to break the law and continued to receive and treat waste motor vehicles,” Mr Regan said. “We do not expect large waste management operators to conduct their business in such a reckless manner. Where we do encounter such behaviour we will always take robust enforcement action.”
Mr Thompson today declined to comment on the case.
Subscribe for free