The skip hire and commercial waste management specialist, which operates from a site in North Quay Road, Newhaven, pleaded guilty at Brighton Magistrates Court on Monday (August 22) to four offences relating to waste being stored there.
The site has planning permission to operate as a waste transfer station, but this permission has a number of conditions. One of these restricts the height of piles of waste to four metres. Rabbit Group broke this condition, storing waste in some piles that were up to nine metres high, five metres above the permitted height, and despite “extensive” informal negotiations, the council wasunable to resolve the situation.
In February of this year, the council served formal Breach of Condition Notices on Rabbit Group, but the requirements of these notices were not met, resulting in court action against them. At Brighton Magistrates, the company was ordered to pay a 200 fine and costs totalling 515. The maximum fine that could have been imposed was 1,000 per offence, resulting in a fine of 4,000. This was reduced by the magistrate mostly because a guilty plea had been entered.
Rupert Clubb, director of economy, transport and environment at the council, said: Formal enforcement action is always a last resort, and it is unfortunate that despite repeated attempts, we werent able to resolve this informally. But this breach of planning control has had a harmful effect on the local area, is upsetting for people living nearby and is completely unacceptable, so we are pleased to have gained a successful prosecution against the Rabbit Group.
That said, we are disappointed with the level of fines imposed as we do not consider they reflect the severity of the offence, but we hope this will send a message to other waste operators, that we will not tolerate blatant and ongoing breaches of planning control.
The council added that the Environment Agency and Environmental Health Officers from Lewes district council had also been investigating the site.
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In a statement issued today (August 26), Amanda Bridson, director of Sussex Waste Recycling Ltd, said that her company had been working with East Sussex county council planners over the last few months on the contraventions to existing planning with reference to stockpile heights.
She said:The stockpiles have grown as a result of technical difficulties with Rabbit Groups pioneering biomass energy-from-waste plant at Lancing. Rabbit have invested over 15 million in this plant which is now fully operational at full capacity, and the stockpiles are now within planning limits.
It was agreed by all parties that to dump the waste into landfill sites in East & West Sussex and Surrey was not a viable option, and against Rabbit Groups ethos.
Ms Bridson added that the levels of fines imposed upon Rabbit Group reflected the dilemmas faced in the case.
She added: Rabbit Group have now submitted several planning variations to East Sussex county council.
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