Suspended prison sentences for brothers for illegal waste storage in Shropshire

Shrewsbury Crown Court sentenced Jonathan and Mark Nicholson from Armagh, Northern Ireland, to eight months imprisonment, suspended for 12 months, in February 2022

Two brothers have been given suspended prison sentences for illegally storing more than 26,000 cubic metres of waste at a site in Shropshire.

Shrewsbury Crown Court sentenced Jonathan and Mark Nicholson from Armagh, Northern Ireland, to eight months imprisonment, suspended for 12 months, in February 2022.

They were ordered to undertake 100 hours of unpaid work and were disqualified from being a company director for three years, in addition to being charged more than £23,000 in total for the cost of the prosecution.

According to the Environment Agency, both men admitted the charge of breaching the environmental permit for the site which was run through a company called Greenway Waste Recycling Ltd that they were directors of.

They admitted to having inappropriately stockpiled bales of waste, including plastics, wood, metal, paper and cardboard, between 12 October 2016 and 19 January 2017 at a site on land at Recycling House in Telford.

The waste dumped amounted to roughly the equivalent of 10 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

The Environment Agency added a “significant waste fire” took place at the site in April 2021 which led to the M54 being partially closed as well as a number of neighbouring primary schools.

David Hudson, Environment Manager for the West Midlands Area of the Environment Agency said: “Waste crime can have a serious environmental impact. It puts communities at risk and undermines legitimate business and the investment and economic growth that go with it.

“We support legitimate businesses and we are proactively supporting them by disrupting and stopping the criminal element. This is backed up by the threat of tough enforcement as in this case.

“We continue to use intelligence-led approaches to target the most serious crimes and evaluate which interventions are most effective.”

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