Press release: Car breaker given £3,952 penalty for waste documentation offences

Yesterday (Wednesday 24 January 2018), Paul Tranter of Turnings, Knighton, pleaded guilty at Merthyr Tydfil Magistrates’ Court to a charge of failing to produce waste transfer notes for his business.

The 49-year-old was fined £2,000, ordered to pay £1,782.68 in costs along with a £170 victim surcharge.

Circumstances of the offence

As part of a wider investigation into Mr Tranter’s activities in relation to end of life vehicles at the Peugeot Breakers site in Knighton, Environment Agency officers served a notice on him on 7 September 2016. This notice required Mr Tranter to produce waste transfer notes or written records relating to the transfer of all controlled waste to and from the site between 10 September 2014 and 7 September 2016.

A waste transfer note is used to record the transfer of waste between different holders. This can be between the producer of the waste and a waste carrier, or a waste carrier and a disposal site or transfer station. There is a requirement to produce these notes under the Environmental Protection Act 1990.

No documentation was received by the Environment Agency from Mr Tranter and so a letter was sent to him on 12 October 2016 stating that the requirements of the notice had not been complied with. A fixed penalty notice for the failure to comply with the notice, served on him in September 2016, was issued on 19 January 2017, requiring payment of the penalty within one month. To date the Environment Agency has still not received the documentation required and Mr Tranter has failed to pay the fixed penalty notice.

Remarks on the day of court hearing

Speaking after the case, an Environment Agency officer in charge of the investigation said:

Waste transfer notes allow everyone involved in the transfer to know what they are dealing with so they can manage it properly. Waste, if not managed properly, can damage the environment and blight local communities so these transfer notes allow us to check that waste has been disposed of safely and lawfully.

During sentencing the magistrates commented that Mr Tranter had been foolish to ignore the notices and noted that this was not his first incident with the Environment Agency (warning letter in 2011).

In mitigation Mr Tranter stated that he didn’t understand the requirements around waste transfer notes, runs a small business and wants to ‘keep going’. He also stated that the waste did always go to permitted facilities, although there were no transfer notes to show this.