A PARTNER in a Leigh scrap metal and skip hire firm was fined £3,000 after pleading guilty to dumping waste on farmland.

Stephen Cleworth, who is an active partner in the firm A & A Cleworth & Sons Limited, was also ordered to pay £1977.72 in costs to the Environment Agency, which brought the prosecution.

Kevin Slack, prosecuting, told Wigan Magistrates' Court how on September 8 last year an Environment Agency officer saw a skip vehicle drive up a track from Bickershaw Road, Abram, on to Morris's Farm. The skip was full of soil and rubble. The driver took the vehicle to a depression in a field, where he then tipped the skip and dumped its contents on to the ground.

The Agency traced the vehicle as belonging to A & A Cleworth & Sons.

When the officer returned the same day with some colleagues to inspect the site, they saw that the depression in the ground was being filled in. Five mounds of waste had been dumped and some of it had been pushed and levelled off into the depression. The waste included soil, bricks, rubble, paving, household items and plastic bin-bags, containing old clothes, garden cuttings and broken glass.

Also present in the field was the farmer who owned the land. He had taken on A & A Cleworth to fill in the depression, which was a cutting from a disused railway line. The firm had brought about nine loads of waste to the site in the previous fortnight.

When the Agency interviewed Stephen Cleworth under caution, he admitted that he was a partner in the firm and that he was the driver of the skip vehicle. He told the Agency that no waste had actually been brought on to the farm from elsewhere, but that his firm had just moved earth from a nearby mound.

The Agency pointed out that an officer had actually seen Cleworth bring the full skip on to the farm from elsewhere, via the track. Cleworth was unable to explain this.

Dumping waste of this kind, which was clearly not suitable for landscaping purposes because of its contents, must be properly licensed by the Environment Agency, to ensure that the activity does not damage the environment. In this case no such licence existed. The nature of Cleworth's business meant that he would have been well aware of the law regarding waste disposal.

Cleworth of Bow Road, Leigh, pleaded guilty to one offence.