ONE of Bridgwater’s oldest firms has been ordered to pay £9,000 in fines and costs after admitting illegally sorting, storing and crushing waste.

S Roberts & Son (Bridgwater) Ltd, part of the Roberts Group whose website describes it as “a trusted family business going back three generations”, already had two formal cautions in 2012 for previous offending.

Taunton Magistrates heard the company, which carried out the offences at a site at Spaxton, was an experienced waste operator.

It had held a permit for a waste transfer station since 1994 and was allowed, under an agreement known as an exemption, to import up to 1,000 tonnes of inert wastes including soil, stones, bricks and tiles to be stored and used in construction works.

However, the exemption does not allow the manufacture of aggregate on site by crushing or for aggregate to be taken away for use elsewhere which require a permit issued by the Environment Agency under the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2010.

When Agency officers visited the Roberts & Son Spaxton site on February 4, 2014, they saw a huge pile of construction and demolition waste.

Becky Irish, a director of the company, said waste was brought in and passed through a crusher to produce aggregate.

She went on to explain the aggregate was then taken off-site and used to make tracks at other sites.

During their inspection, officers found skips containing other types of waste such as metal, carpets and plastics.

Soil was also being stored and screened on site for resale.

None of these additional activities are allowed under the site’s exemption.

The company has co-operated fully with the Environment Agency since the site inspection and now has a permit and is operating correctly.

Lisa Wright for the Environment Agency, which brought the case, said: “This was an established waste company that should have known it was operating beyond the conditions of its exemption and should have obtained a permit for the waste storage and processing activities it was carrying out at the site.

Permits are necessary to safeguard the environment and protect human health.”

Taunton Magistrates Court fined S Roberts & Son (Bridgwater) Ltd £2,000 and ordered it to pay £3,000 costs after pleading guilty to operating a regulated facility without an environmental permit contrary to the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2010.

It was also ordered to pay a £4,000 subsistence fee to cover charges it would have incurred if the site had been correctly permitted.