A Swindon council task group has concluded that a fire which burned for 57 days in 2014 at a site owned by Averies Recycling “was preventable and avoidable if timely action had been taken”.
The fire at a site in Marshgate, Swindon involved 1,000 tonnes of general and building waste with the subsequent clear-up believed to have cost in the region of £500,000.
The report from the task group will go before Swindon council’s scrutiny committee today (7 June), and says “opportunities were not taken” to reduce the risk of further incidents in the aftermath of a smaller fire in 2013.
According to the findings from the group’s report, “the overloading of the site was observable in the previous year (and was reported) but this did not result in change”.
It added that “enforcement notices were not acted on in a timely manner”, and communication and delays in the use of powers “prolonged the response time and clear up”, which ultimately led to additional public purse costs.
It concluded that if the council and the Environment Agency had worked together better, the second fire in 2014 could have been avoided.
The task group was set up in 2015 by the council to investigate the circumstances that led up to the incident.
Recommendations
The task group gave seven recommendations to help address the issues going forward.
This includes inviting the Agency to produce a quarterly report on all sites in Swindon to give reassurance that the Agency is undertaking the appropriate checks.
It also invited the Environment Agency to take time-dated photographs of sites which show its state, which would could then be circulated to the council’s planning committee, the fire service and the Health and Safety Executive to help highlight any areas for concern at an earlier point.
It also said the Environment Agency should consider the value of waste on any site on fire in the future as zero, “meaning that the ‘loss of money’ excuse cited by Averies cannot be used”.
The task group also said government should also be lobbied for “a change in legislation to allow putting insurance policies in place at the point of licensing, or a financial guarantee”.
This would ensure that “where a site has to be cleaned up, and the operator that managed the site has gone bust, there is an independent financial guarantee in place to fund the clean-up”.
Incident
In 2016, two brothers who served as directors of Averies Recycling were sentenced at Swindon Crown Court, after pleading guilty to breaching environmental regulations (see letsrecycle.com story).
Lee and David Averies had pleaded guilty to breaching the Environmental Protection Act at Swindon Skips Ltd at Cheney Manor, and Averies Recycling Swindon Ltd, in Marshgate, Swindon.
The charges cover the period when two large fires broke out at the Averies sites in Brindley Close and Marshgate in November 2013 and July 2014 respectively.
The fire burned from 21 July to 15 September 2015.
Useful links
Averies fire task group – final report
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Source: letsrecycle.com Waste Managment