The name’s Agency; The Environment Agency. And they have recently unveiled plans to clamp-down on unlicensed waste carriers in the North East of England.
The agency intends to write to 13,000 waste haulage and skip hire firms to confirm that they hold a waste carriers licence. The highly sophisticated plan will involve cross-referencing businesses from sources such as the Yellow Pages with its own database of registered carriers in the hope of catching out those illegally trading as waste carriers.
During the campaign, which will be funded by BREW (Business Resource and Waste Efficiency), the Environment Agency will send out up to 1,000 letters a week. Businesses will then be given four weeks to respond, after which time a second letter of warning will be issued before legal action is taken. Gerald Lee, campaign manager, said,
“Our message is simple – we will track down unregistered waste carriers. Our ‘dump-it and leg-it' campaign is successfully getting the message across that householders and businesses should only use a registered waste carrier or face a £5,000 fine. We are now contacting firms, who advertise that they work in the waste collection business, directly to give them a chance to apply to be registered.
If they ignore us then we will investigate and we will not hesitate to prosecute if we find that they have been operating illegally.”
Let’s hope any currently unregistered businesses get their act together. They should be shaken, not deterred!
