Falsifying paperwork leads to £1,350 fine for Giffnock waste company
11 January 2012
Scotland's environment watchdog is hoping that a £1,350 fine handed to a waste management company at Paisley Sheriff Court for falsifying records will serve as a warning to others in the industry that such behaviour will not be tolerated.
Mitchell Thomson Limited, based in Giffnock, pled guilty to intentionally making false entries in records required to be kept under the conditions of their waste management licence, in that they signed 16 waste transfer notices for waste they did not believe had been received at the site and created false invoices to accompany these transfer notes. The matter was investigated by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) and reported to the Procurator Fiscal.
In the course of investigating another company's waste disposal history in May 2010, SEPA was advised that waste had been taken to Mitchell Thomson's licensed site in Robslee Drive, Giffnock. SEPA obtained copies of waste transfer notes which identified 16 loads of waste as going to the site during 2009. Proof for 14 loads came in the form of copies of the originally unsigned transfer notes, which had retrospectively been signed by a Mitchell Thomson representative, the remaining two were accompanied by Mitchell Thomson headed Waste Received Notes.
Following an investigation conducted by SEPA officers that included interviews with Mitchell Thomson Limited, the company admitted to signing transfer notes relating to loads of waste which, to the best of their knowledge, never actually came to them. They also admitted creating bogus invoices to accompany these transfer notes, in an effort to cover the trail of signing for loads of waste which did not come onto site.
Colin Morrow, Senior Environment Protection Officer at SEPA, said:
"Mitchell Thomson Limited has operated under a Waste Management Licence at its site in Giffnock for 30 years and is an experienced operator in the waste management industry. The company made a deliberate attempt to provide SEPA with false information, and to cover its tracks by further misleading us in the form of the bogus invoices. This was a deliberate intention to deceive, rather than inaccurate record keeping.
"Duty of Care paperwork (transfer notes) is the only way the chain of custody for waste can be followed. SEPA's officers have been hampered by Mitchell Thomson Ltd in the investigation of another company, to the extent that SEPA were unable to use the legislation to hold another company accountable for the waste they had handled.
"We hope that this prosecution makes it absolutely clear that falsification of transfer notes and associated documents cannot, and will not, be tolerated."
Ends
Notes to editor
The exact charge Mitchell Thomson Limited pled guilty to was:
- Between 1 January 2009 and 22 June 2010 at Robslee Drive, Giffnock, Glasgow, you MITCHELL THOMSON LIMITED, being the holder of waste management licence WML/W/00115, did intentionally make a false entry in a record required to be kept under condition 6.3 of said licence, which requires that true and accurate records shall be kept of, inter alia, the quantity and type of waste accepted at the site, in that you did sign 16 waste transfer notices dated 2009 relating to Damm Environmental Limited, for waste you did not believe had been received at the site, keep 14 of the said 16 false waste transfer notices and create false invoices relating to said invoices; CONTRARY to the Environmental Protection Act 1990, Section 44(2)