Seventy-two-year-old Stephen Lack owns the Monkton Sidings site, and he and his son Andrew are said to have disposed of waste in a manner “likely to cause pollution”.
On 13 September 2024, Stephen Lack was sentenced at Northampton crown court to 34 weeks’ imprisonment, suspended for 12 months. However, he has been ordered to pay £2,400 towards prosecution costs and has been given two years to clear the waste.
Andrew Lack was sentenced on 26 July 2023 at Northampton Magistrates’ Court to a six-month prison sentence, suspended for 12 months on the condition that he perform 250 hours of unpaid work.
Investigations by the Environment Agency, including drone footage, are said to have revealed that skips of waste were being processed on site in an unlawful manner.
In addition to the site’s lack of environmental permit, waste was stored on the ground, risking contaminants polluting the soil and groundwater. The EA deemed this “particularly harmful” for adjacent farmland and Fineshade Woods, a Forestry Commission location just 250m from the waste site.
Previous offences
Stephen Lack is reported to have three previous convictions for similar offences at his Monkton Sidings site. He went to prison in 2021 for operating the waste site illegally, where waste was burned, buried and stockpiled.
During his imprisonment, Andrew took over operations, but Stephen retained ownership of the site and allowed his son to continue the business. After his release, he resumed his involvement on-site.
Representing the Environment Agency at the hearing, solicitor advocate Sarah Dunne told the court that as well as allowing his son to use his land, Stephen Lack had helped with the driving of skip vehicles and the selling of scrap metal. She said: “This was not a wholly passive offence.”
Judge Mayo said that Stephen Lack’s behaviour had been “deliberate” and that he had exercised “ownership and control over the site for a period of two years.”
Paul Salter, senior environmental crime officer for the Environment Agency, said: “It’s our job to regulate waste activity to make sure it doesn’t put people or the environment at risk. These cases are a shocking example of two individuals who continued to be driven by profit blatantly ignoring their responsibilities. They put people and nature in harm’s way and attempted to undercut legitimate businesses.”
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