Unlicensed collector jailed as East Anglian tyre mountain remains

Timothy Phillips (previously known as Palmer), who had operated as Sheriff Tyres, Sheriff Tyres Limited and Tyre Management Recycling, pleaded guilty in October 2001 to four offences related to keeping, treating and depositing waste tyres in Suffolk and Norfolk without a waste management license.

His common-law wife, Ann Cummins, pleaded guilty to three offences related to similar matters at the same time. Sentencing for the pair was deferred for one year.

Mr Phillips had been ordered under a separate court injunction to dispose of one million tyres being stored at a site at Little Heath in Barnham, Suffolk. But only 2,000 tyres were ever moved.

One year on from the original hearing, the couple were sentenced at Norwich Crown Court. Mr Phillips was given a two-month jail sentence for four offences to run concurrently and Miss Cummins a three-year conditional discharge.

“Horrific”

In sentencing, Judge Downes described the site at Little Heath, which is still full of tyre waste, as “horrific” and said the defendants had deceived the court.

Geoff Garner, who was an environmental protection officer for the Environment Agency during the case, estimated that Mr Phillips had collected between three and four million tyres over the past three to four years. Both Mr Phillips and Miss Simmons have been declared bankrupt.

Con-man

Mr Garner attributed the success of Mr Phillips' businesses to his “gift of the gab”. “He was basically a con-man,” Mr Garner said. “He kept making new limited companies and would present them as a new business without his name on the director's list. He owed money to landfills, transport companies, trailers, for buildings he rented and shredding machines – everything he did.”

The Environment Agency first became aware that Mr Phillips was operating an unlicensed tyre processing business at White Fen Drove, Lakenheath, Suffolk in November 1998. Despite several requests by the Agency to modify his businesses practices, Phillips continued to run an unlicensed site, where the registered waste carrier was Miss Cummins.

Then in October 1999 an Agency officer visited an industrial unit at Little Heath run by Phillips, where an estimated 40,000 tyres were being stored incorrectly.

In November 1999 a file was submitted for legal action relevant to offences committed at three unlicensed sites and in October 2000, another 100,000 tyres were discovered at the Roundham Park industrial estate in East Harling, Norfolk, which had been stored by Sheriff Tyres without a waste management license.

Hope

The remaining tyres at Little Heath are not protected by a fire break, Mr Garner said. It is hoped that a new company can be licensed at the Barnham site in order to shred the tyres on the spot in preparation for transport and disposal. The cost of disposal if a company cannot be licensed for the site is estimated at 500,000.

Around 30,000 tyres at Roundham Park were disposed of by the site's owners at a cost to themselves of 18,000. The tyres at White Fen Drove have also been moved, but not by Mr Phillips and Miss Cummins and not at their expense.