Man jailed for dumping waste to make £80k payment

A former waste operator given a 17-month jail term after admitting illegally dumping tonnes of rubbish has agreed to pay back nearly £80,000 to taxpayers.

Liam Winters, 48, a former company director from Rugby, Warwickshire was prosecuted by the Environment Agency after waste was dumped at sites in Hertfordshire.

The agency said waste, including car parts and food packaging, dumped at one quarry would have filled the Royal Albert Hall three times over.

Environment Agency officials subsequently also took action under proceeds of crime legislation and a judge has now approved an agreement.

Liam Winters was jailed in November 2023 at a hearing in St Albans Crown Court.

Liam and his brother Mark Winters, 50, of Bangor Erris, County Mayo in the Republic of Ireland, both pleaded guilty to breaching environment legislation by unlawfully disposing of rubbish between 2015 and 2017, after an Environment Agency prosecution.

Mark Winters was given a 12-month jail sentence suspended for two years.

The Environment Agency investigated dumping at three sites in Hertfordshire:

• Codicote Quarry, near Stevenage
• Anstey Quarry, near Buntingford
• Nuthampstead shooting ground, near Royston

Liam Winters had been a director of the Anstey Quarry Company and both brothers were directors of Codicote Quarry Ltd, an agency spokesman said.

Proceeds of crime proceedings had also been launched against Mark Winters, but a judge had yet to make any ruling, he added.

Judge Caroline Wigin was given detail of the proceeds of crime payment agreement made between the Environment Agency and Liam Winters at a hearing in Luton Crown Court on Thursday.

Barrister Rebecca Vanstone, who represented the agency, told the judge that Liam Winters had agreed to pay £78,835.

The judge said Liam Winters, of High Street, Hillmorton, Rugby, could be given a further jail term if he failed to pay the money within three months.

After the hearing, Barry Russell, environment manager for the Environment Agency in Hertfordshire, said: "We are determined that waste operators who break the law don't benefit from their crimes."

The payment would be "split" between the Environment Agency and HM Courts & Tribunals Service, the agency spokesman added.

Judge Wigin was told that Liam Winters had been a secondary school English teacher and was now working as a lorry driver.

"Liam Winters presided over the illegal disposal of assorted rubbish at Codicote Quarry," said the agency spokesman after Thursday's hearing.

"An investigation by the Environment Agency found approximately 200,000 cubic metres (about seven million cubic feet) of household, commercial and industrial waste, as well as electrical items, car parts, furniture, food packaging, wood and metal.

"It could have filled the Royal Albert Hall nearly three times over."

The spokesman said Winters had also "ignored" Environment Agency instructions to "stop filling" Anstey Quarry with banned waste, such as plastic, wood, metal and packaging, "broken into tiny pieces".

He added: "The piles of waste at Anstey reached 20 metres into the sky, the height of five double-decker buses."

The Anstey Quarry Company had an Environment Agency permit to treat and dispose of up to 10,000 cubic metres of clean soil waste a year, the spokesman said.

Investigators estimated as much as 250,000 cubic metres of "harmful biodegradable materials" had been buried there, he added.

The brothers had not owned any of the three sites but operated under leases, the spokesman said.

There was "no suggestion" that the owners of any of the three sites had played "any part" in "the criminal activity", he added.

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