Company directors may face jail for environmental crimes

At its annual 'name and shame' event in London, the Agency said a recent increase in fines and number of prosecutions had not discouraged businesses from environmental offences. The average fine per prosecution rose by 36% to 8,744 from 2001 to 2002 and the number of prosecutions rose by 13%. But repeat offenders do not seem to have been put off – they made up 20% of this year's culprits.

Chief executive Baroness Barbara Young said: “We hope to make fines more commensurate with environmental impact and the profit people may have made from avoiding regulation. For some very extreme offences it may be that we see more custodial sentences as a means of doing something about this.”

Jailed

The Agency highlighted the case of a director of Midlands-based Ivory Plant Hire Ltd who was jailed for 12 months for a range of offences relating to unlawful tipping of contaminated waste on unlicensed land.

Baroness Young told letsrecycle.com that punishment by jail sentence would be easier to achieve for smaller companies where there was clear evidence an individual had deliberately flouted the law. “Where it's a one-man band, it's clear who has caused an offence. In the case of big corporate companies it would have to be a very gross flagrant crime to nail an individual director,” she said. For bigger companies, the threat of large fines and bad publicity would work better, she said.

Agency chairman Sir John Harman explained: “The fines should at least be of a level to make offences worth avoiding. The amounts would depend on the company size, but fines should be of the same magnitude as the costs avoided by not following the correct procedure in the first place, or as the damage caused by the incident, or both put together.

“The courts should be using that judgement to decide fines. There's no way that 8,500 is a reflection of the environmental damage caused.”

Waste

The waste industry was the sector responsible for most pollution incidents last year, despite reducing serious incidents and improving site management since 2001. The Agency's report, Spotlight on Business Environmental Performance 2002 showed that in 2002, eight waste companies were fined more than 20,000 for environmental offences – more than in any other sector. And in total, 15 waste companies were fined more than 10,000, compared to nine in 2001.

Baroness Young said many offences were caused by smaller companies deliberately dealing with waste illegally. “The problem is the unregulated companies in the market – the illegal end of the market with regulation exemptions which we don't regularly visit and inspect. Part of our work is trying to track down the illegal ones and fine them.”

The Baroness said more money was needed to catch unlicensed 'waste' companies. She estimated 10 million would be needed to launch undercover surveillance operations to prevent fly-tipping offences alone. The cost of cleaning up fly-tipping incidents costs 100 million a year at present. But she praised most large waste companies for their proper environmental management systems and encouraged them to work with the Agency to reduce accidents.

The number of serious pollution incidents caused by waste management companies had fallen by 11% since 2000 and by more than 50% since 2001, although this involved foot and mouth-linked incidents.

Environmental Services Association chief executive Dirk Hazell said: “We hope that next year's Spotlight will give a more balanced report of operators' performances with a much clearer distinction between criminals who deliberately evade the law and reputable regulated companies who occasionally lapse.”

The top ten highest fines for waste offences in 2002

Source: Environment Agency