Environment Agency | A recycling company has been prosecuted for breaking an environmental permit requiring it to keep all waste within its site boundary.
At Nottingham Magistrates Court, Johnsons Aggregates and Recycling Ltd of Crompton Road, Ilkeston, Derbyshire, were fined £40,000 and ordered to pay costs of £49,886.75.
The company had pleaded guilty at a previous hearing on 19 July 2025 to breaching the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016.
The court was told the Environment Agency started monitoring sites in March 2021 at Hallam Fields Industrial Estate, Ilkeston, due to complaints about dust, odour, and noise.
Officers attended land adjacent to the defendant company’s land, they discovered that a large amount of waste material was on the land. The waste was a type of ash which is commonly used as an aggregate in construction.
Company officials said that the land was owned by someone else and was in the early stages of being developed. They also said that waste on the land had been placed there with the landowner’s permission and for the landowner’s use.
However, the company later accepted that it had made mistakes in dealing with waste and that it had breached its permit by placing the waste on the land.
The Environment Agency issued a compliance assessment report requiring the company to operate within the boundary of the permit.
The officers returned to the site on 11 May 2021 where they observed that large amounts of waste remained on site. Company officials said the waste had accumulated and had been more difficult to dispose of due to COVID-19.
The company was told to remove the ash from the land by 3 January 2022.
Officers visited the land on 4 January 2022 and found that the mounds of waste, though reduced in size, were still being stored and covered approximately five acres.
