Inquiry chair ‘alarmed’ waste mountain not disclosed

11 hours ago

Stuart RustSouth of England

Reuters An enormous mountain of waste takes up most of the image. Behind the dump there are rows of bare, autumnal trees stretching off into the distance.

The chair of a House of Lords committee has said she was “alarmed” the Environment Agency (EA) did not notify it about a number of illegal waste sites.

The agency submitted evidence to an inquiry into illegal waste dumping that included the locations of several waste sites in England.

But Baroness Shas Sheehan said it did not include the mountain of waste in Kidlington, Oxfordshire, as well as sites in Wigan and Worcestershire, which have since come to light in the media.

The EA has called the claims “inaccurate” and said it “responded comprehensively” to the questions it was asked.

An explainer of the size and location of a field near Kidlington

Baroness Sheehan has written to the EA’s chair and chief executive, Alan Lovell and Philip Duffy, to seek clarification on the issue.

She said members of the environment and climate change committee had become “increasingly alarmed” at reports of new waste crime sites in the media.

“We are disappointed that these sites were not deemed necessary to bring to the committee’s attention,” she said.

House of Lords Baroness Shas Sheehan, a woman with dark cropped hair and pearl earrings, smiles into the camera.

The committee’s inquiry, which concluded in October, focused on organised waste crime and illegal dumping that posed a serious environmental risk.

In its submission, the EA said it was aware of sites in Kent, Lancashire, Cheshire, Cornwall and Norfolk.

Baroness Sheehan said she was concerned “there may be other sites of a similarly large and environmentally damaging scale” that had not been disclosed.

An Environment Agency spokesperson said: “These claims are inaccurate. We have engaged with Baroness Sheehan’s inquiry in good faith and have responded comprehensively to the questions posed to us. We will continue to work closely with the Committee on their further questions.”

The EA said its evidence to the committee directly answered a request to identify illegal dumps comparable in size to one in Hoads Wood in Kent.

It told the committee it was aware of six other illegal waste sites estimated to be as large as or larger than the Hoads Wood dump.

It said additional sites reported in the media did not meet that definition.

You can follow BBC Oxfordshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.