A Crawley haulier has been fined £24,000 and charged costs of £12,500, after being found guilty of dumping waste illegally on a Surrey golf course.

Brighton Magistrates Court heard that Cook and Son, of Lowfield Heath, Crawley, had been involved in the illegal dumping of almost 700 lorry-loads of waste dumped at Rusper Golf Club in Newdigate, near Dorking, between 1 June and 29 November 2018.

The illegal dumping of the builders’ waste was discovered after an anonymous tip-off triggered an Environment Agency investigation.

The investigation discovered that the golf club owners, Worthing-based Rusper Leisure, had allowed Cook and Son and Bell and Sons Construction of Faygate to offload the waste, none of which had approval from the Environment Agency.

Rusper Leisure had planning permission to raise part of an embankment on the driving range by two metres to catch stray golf balls. However the agreement with Mole Valley District Council was to only use clean soil.

Investigators from the Environment Agency found the surface of the bund contained glass, wood, plastic, tarmac, brick, concrete and other material. Similar loads were also dropped around the course and nearby.

Cook and Bell paid Rusper Leisure £100 a load for the tonnes of waste left on and around the greens in the second half of 2018.

The investigation also discovered waste used to create more embankments and stockpiled close to woods on the edge of the golf course and in the club’s car park. Builders’ waste was mixed in with some of the soil.

Jamie Hamilton, the senior environmental crime officer who led the investigation for the Environment Agency, said: “Companies must ensure the Environment Agency authorises any tipping of waste in advance.

“Cook and Son and Bell and Sons, both established operators, discarded the waste over five months without making any meaningful checks that the golf course could accept it.”

Christopher Cook, of Cook and Son, admitted his drivers left waste on the course and that he’d taken no further steps to find out if the site had a permit from the Environment Agency, beyond asking Duncan Bell, a director with Bell and Sons, if the site was legal for that purpose.

Bell told the Environment Agency he didn’t check if an environmental permit was needed for the work when told by the golf course owners that planning permission was in place for raising the bund. Nor did he check where his company’s lorries were dumping the waste.

When interviewed, Rusper Leisure’s company secretary, Sara Blunden, told investigators she didn’t know the work needed a permit from the Environment Agency, claiming she believed planning permission from Mole Valley was enough to bring waste onto the golf course.

The investigation also found that hundreds of documents, known as waste transfer notes, which track where material is taken from and to, lacked crucial detail such as a description of the waste, where on the course it was placed, and if it was hazardous or not.

District judge Tessa Szagun fined Rusper Leisure £2,000 for running a waste operation at the golf club with no environmental permit. Costs were £3,000. 

For dumping banned waste, Cook and Son was fined £24,000, with costs of £12,500.

Bell and Sons Construction was fined £12,000. Costs were £8,000. All three were given victim surcharge fees of £170. 

Cook and Son and Bell and Sons Construction were both charged with breaching section 33(1)(a) of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 in relation to the dumped waste.

No penalty was given to the Cook and Bell companies for failing to provide written descriptions of the waste, or to Cook and Son for not taking measures to avoid breaches of the law by Rusper Leisure.

Rusper Golf Club, which was opened by former Ryder Cup captain and Open champion Tony Jacklin in 1992, has since closed.

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