Golf Business News – Surrey golf club owners fined for allowing illegal rubbish to be dumped on course

Two West Sussex companies have been convicted of dumping waste at Rusper Golf Club which is now closed for six months in 2018, along with the course owners who allowed it to take place.

A district judge called the act “reckless,” handing out fines of up to £38,000.

Anonymous tip-offs led the Environment Agency to find almost 700 pieces of waste illegally dumped at a Surrey club between June and November 2018.

Rusper Golf Club, located between Horsham and Crawley, first opened in 1992, but closed in September 2020 due to financial difficulties.

Worthing-based Rusper Leisure Ltd allowed Crawley haulier Cook and Son Ltd and Bell and Sons Construction Ltd, of Faygate, to remove the waste, neither of which was approved by the Environment Agency.

Rusper Leisure had planning permission to raise part of the fairway on the driving range by two meters to catch stray golf balls. But the agreement with Mole Valley District Council was to use only clean ground.

Environment Agency investigators found the surface of the pile to contain glass, wood, plastic, asphalt, bricks, concrete and other materials. Similar loads are also dropped along the course and nearby.

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

Illegal waste 'collected'

The investigation also found debris used to build other ditches and piled up near woods on the edge of the golf course and the club's parking lot. Builders' waste was mixed with other soil.

Jamie Hamilton, senior environmental crime officer who led the Environment Agency's investigation, said: “Companies must ensure that the Environment Agency approves any waste disposal in advance. Cook and Son and Bell and Sons, both known operators, dumped waste for over 5 months without making any reasonable checks that the golf course would have accepted.”

When interviewed, the company secretary of Rusper Leisure, Sara Blunden, told the investigators that she did not know that the work required permission from the Environment Agency, and said that she believed that planning permission from Mole Valley was sufficient to bring waste to the golf course.

Duncan Bell, director of Bell and Sons, told the Environment Agency that he did not check whether an environmental permit was required to carry out the work when he was told that there was planning permission to raise the fund. He also did not check where his company's trucks dumped the waste.

Christopher Cook, of Cook and Son, admitted that his drivers left waste on the course and that he did not take steps to find out whether the site had permission from the Environment Agency, apart from asking Bell if the site was legal for that purpose. . It wasn't like that. The site had limited planning permission, but no waste disposal permit. And there was more.

Papers 'lack important information'

Documents called waste transfer notes track where the material is picked up and taken to, but most of the hundreds of dockets seen by the Environment Agency did not contain important information such as the description of the waste, where it is placed, and if it is hazardous or hazardous. not.

District judge Tessa Szagun fined Rusper Leisure Ltd £2,000 for carrying out waste work at the golf club without an environmental permit. The cost was £3,000.

For dumping prohibited waste, Cook and Son Ltd was fined £24,000, with costs of £12,500. Accordingly, Bell and Sons Construction Ltd was fined £12,000. The cost was £8,000. All three were given £170 victim surcharges.

For not having an environmental permit, the Environment Agency charged Rusper Leisure Ltd with breaching regulation 12(1)(a) of the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016.

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

No penalty was awarded to Cook and Bell for failing to provide written descriptions of the waste, or to Cook and Son for failing to take steps to prevent breaches by Rusper Leisure Ltd.

All cases relate to the period 1 June to 29 November 2018. The companies were convicted at Brighton Magistrates' Court on 13 May, having pleaded guilty at the start of the trial.