The owner of a skip hire company has been ordered to pay £5,048 in fines and costs for storing potentially dangerous asbestos at a site near Salisbury, Wiltshire after the case was brought by the Environment Agency.

On 22 May 2008, Agency officers were carrying out a routine inspection of a waste transfer station when they saw a skip full of cement-bonded asbestos. The skip was in an open yard covered with a tarpaulin.

The site operator, Robert Maidment, was only licensed to handle non-hazardous waste such as wood, plastics and builder’s rubble because the site doesn’t have the facilities to accept consignments of hazardous materials including asbestos. Inquiries revealed the corrugated asbestos sheets had come from a block of garages in Tisbury. Robert Maidment had been paid by a roofing company, the waste producer, to take the asbestos away to a landfill site in Redlynch near Salisbury for safe disposal. Instead he transported it to his own premises in breach of the Environmental Permitting Regulations 2007.

“Because of its hazardous nature, asbestos must be handled with great care and only kept at sites with suitable facilities. The defendant had been warned by the Agency about the illegal storage of asbestos at Stainers Yard, yet chose to ignore our advice,” said Emily Pitts for the Environment Agency.

Robert Maidment, of Clarendon Close, Gillingham, Dorset was fined £3,000 and ordered to pay £2,048 costs by Salisbury magistrates after pleading guilty to receiving a skip of bonded asbestos at Maidment Skip Hire on 22 May 2008 in contravention of his site operator’s environmental permit and contrary to the Environmental Permitting Regulations 2007.

Source: http://www.workplacelaw.net/news/display/id/18486