Dr Anna Willetts, environmental law expert and former CIWM President, dives into several examples of her recent cases and explains why, she believes, they demonstrate a failure of regulation.
The analogy I always use for my clients, who are in a regulated industry and find themselves in my company for (alleged) non-compliance with permits and exemptions, is that it’s like being caught speeding at 72 mph on the motorway whilst the guy next to you is doing 150 mph and doesn’t get caught.
Yes, it’s an offence, but when the regulator has apparently limited resources, you’d think efforts would be better focused on those likely to cause more harm and damage.
Take one of my clients who the Environment Agency charged with providing waste transfer notes in response to a Notice which he ‘knew to be false’ – a charge of dishonesty. The man has been running a reputable skip hire business for 19 years without issue, has no convictions for regulatory offences, and provides waste services to local authorities.
He provided the 14 requested notes and the Agency decided that because they were sequentially ordered over a long period, they must be false and that he had ‘made them up’ at a later date.
Was he dishonest?
After those pesky defence lawyers (i.e. me) pointed out why they weren’t fabricated – his ticket system has multiple books for different drivers, lorries and work streams – the Agency then agreed that perhaps they were genuine after all.
Ah, but some of the 14 notes were missing some information – one hadn’t been signed, and one was missing a date. Which our client accepted – some of his drivers hadn’t quite filled out the notes in full, and a staff member had recently died, resulting in some disarray in the business. The phrase ‘cut them some slack’ springs to mind.
Do we think a prosecution was a suitable sanction for such a minor offence? Might a Formal Warning or Caution have been more appropriate? Prosecution is one of the harshest and most costly sanctions and arguably should be a last resort.
My personal view is that incomplete information on a selection of 14 waste transfer notes in 19 years of running a reputable and well-respected skip hire business is not the level of waste crime which needs this level of regulatory time and resources and a Summons to Court, using up valuable Court time.
Three Court hearings later, which took up approximately 10 hours of Court time, and after our client paid for legal representation to clear his name of the allegation of dishonesty, he was fined £500 for the incomplete information offence and now has a criminal conviction to his name.
Actual waste crime
It is this kind of ‘fighting waste crime’ which, in my view, is not dealing with the real hardcore crime committed by hardline waste criminals, often organised crime groups, and which truly damages the environment.
It is an enduring source of frustration to my clients, myself and other defence lawyers practising in this area of environmental law that this is how waste crime is persistently dealt with, whilst Hoads Wood, that beautiful bluebell wood which was decimated by organised waste crime gangs, went ignored for months and months despite multiple reports and footage from the public to the regulators.
The site in Gloucestershire at Over, uncovered by the BBC exposé on illegal waste ‘supersites’ earlier this year, which the Agency knew about for seven years according to the Parish Councillor who had been reporting it, the public watching the lorries going in daily, and nothing was done.
And Kidlington in Oxfordshire, which after it was reported in early June 2025, the Environment Agency sent a ‘cease and desist’ letter to the landowner. Goodness. I bet he was quaking in his boots. Finally, four months later, a Restriction Order was applied for by the Environment Agency. Why did it take so long?
Well, Josh Simons MP asked the Agency why they were not forcibly closing the huge illegal site in his Wigan constituency. He was told ‘we can’t close down illegal sites whilst there is a criminal investigation ongoing.’ This, of course, was nonsense. The site was eventually closed in March this year.
If this was a genuine belief on the part of the Agency, this might explain it. But this is unacceptable. This may be a contentious view of mine, but this lack of action and inability/refusal to close sites by the regulator directly contributes to the harm caused to the environment.
The longer they remain open, the more waste can and will be deposited there. The powers are there in law for this. They were requested by the Agency in 2018 after the Waste for Fuel debacle at Orpington when it said it did not have the power to close sites such as that, and duly then provided to them by government in response. Why were they not being used?
Enforcement undertaking
In the meantime, resources are being used on another client who misread the U1 exemption and mistakenly thought he could deposit 5000 tonnes of soil and concrete, instead of 1000 tonnes. He deposited 1400 tonnes of soil and concrete from a local site, and moved it to another for a construction project.
This was ‘so serious’ it was prosecuted by the Agency as a criminal offence. We offered an Enforcement Undertaking, which is a civil sanction designed for low-risk, low-harm environmental offences to keep them out of overloaded criminal Courts – exactly this type of offence.
Sir James Bevan, ex CEO of the Agency, said the Agency is getting better at using these and should do more of them. We agree. It seems his colleagues do not, however, as our offer was rejected.
This seemed strange as an offer from Severn Trent Water was accepted for polluting a 2km stretch of water and killing fish and other aquatic life – a Category 1 environmental harm offence. And, in my view, somewhat more serious and harmful to the environment than an excess of 400 tonnes of soil and concrete. This felt very odd, and also inconsistent, which is contrary to the Regulators’ Code.
After two rejections of the offer, our client started the process of a Judicial Review to challenge the rejection as he, and his defence team, felt so strongly how unfair it was. We then did an Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) for the background information supporting the decisions, which exposed a biased and pre-determined approach to the offers in my view, and at that point the offer was eventually accepted. The Agency then changed its guidance on challenging decisions to reject offers: now you can’t.
Clearly it is open to the Agency to change its guidance as it sees fit, but shutting down open and transparent routes to challenge regulatory decisions does not feel to me that this is doing anything to deal with waste crime – all it is doing is stifling regulated industry from exercising its rights to fair and open challenge – in particular for minor non-compliances such as this.
The one that got away
And my third, and most recent case illustrates a different angle to waste crime – actual criminals getting away with it.
Back in 2019 (that’s how long it took to prosecute this case), our client was approached by a company called Countrywide Finance Solutions Ltd for removal of waste types.
The business name sounded familiar (most readers will be aware of another waste business with a very similar name), but he wanted to do his due diligence and ensure it was legitimate. He therefore requested a copy of the permit from the Director of the business.
The permit arrived, and he checked the waste codes and types were suitable for the waste his company would be depositing. He verified the company details and spoke with the Director on multiple occasions regarding the project.
Imagine his surprise, then, and that of the driver, when two days into the project, in the process of depositing the waste, the driver was arrested by the police and hauled off to the police station for questioning by the Agency. He was accused of illegally depositing waste at a site which had no environmental permit in place.
Our client immediately contacted the landowner, as well as Countrywide; the latter did not answer the phone or return any calls. He began to realise what had happened. He spoke with colleagues in the industry who had also deposited at that site, and it became clear that all of them were in a similar situation and had been shown the same ‘permit.’ We say permit in inverted commas as by now, he realised that the permit was in fact a fake. An extremely good one, but still a fake.
He arranged with the landowner to allow him to remove the waste which his company had deposited at cost to himself, and this was done within two days. All removal paperwork was provided to the Agency. He showed the landowner a copy of the permit he had been given by Countrywide to assure them that he had deposited the waste in good faith.
At interview under caution stage he explained in full the situation, and set out the issue of the permit, his interactions with Countrywide, its refusal to answer his calls after the event, and his shock at finding out the permit was a fake. He provided details of the party who had provided the fake permit. He explained that as soon as he realised what had happened, he cleared all the waste at cost to himself.
Some five years later, despite having explained the matter, the Agency decided this was serious enough to prosecute. Whilst accepting that he could have taken one more step to ensure the site was permitted (checking the permit number on the public register), it is our view that he was in fact the victim of waste crime in this matter as a result of Countrywide’s deceit.
Who is an easy target?
It is of note that Countrywide was not included in the prosecution, despite the information provided to the Agency by our client and details of Countrywide actually appearing in the prosecution papers, including a phone number.
The decision not to prosecute (or even fully investigate) Countrywide is surprising and raises questions of consistency with regard to the Agency’s approach to such investigations.
It is also important to consider that the Agency chose not to investigate/prosecute the landowners in this case. Whilst it may have been the case that the landowners were not aware of any deposits on site, we frequently act for landowners who are prosecuted for ‘knowingly permitting’ the deposit of waste on their land and they are treated as defendants rather than victims. This adds to concerns relating to the consistency of approach in cases of this nature.
It is not clear to us why the Agency did not follow lines of enquiry in its criminal investigation to secure a conviction of the party with global responsibility, preventing it from doing similar in the future. Countrywide clearly had the intention to break the law, make money and harm the environment.
We can only surmise that further investigations would require such time and/or expense that the Agency took the view it was easier to prosecute our clients. Whatever the reason, it is deeply disappointing that the information provided by our client was not acted on, and those with overall responsibility were not held accountable.
This kind of regulation (and lack of) is an endless source of frustration to myself and other practitioners, as well as our regulated clients. I am always a glass-half-full kind of girl though, so I am ever optimistic that the regulator may read this, have a think, take those thoughts back to head office and see if things might start to change.
In particular, we all really want them to get large-scale, organised illegal waste crime under control, ensure reports from the public are acted on swiftly, and use all the enforcement powers available to them properly and effectively.