• Environment Agency helps seize vehicles worth about £41,000
• Operation limits convicted criminal in ability to trade
• Intelligence-led approach targets serious crime

Enforcement officers from the Environment Agency have led a multi-agency operation to curtail the activities of a convicted criminal in Worcestershire.

Vehicles worth about £41,000, including a tractor and trailer units, have been confiscated from Ridgeway Farm, Throckmorton. They have been identified as stolen.

The farm is the business address of John Bruce who was sentenced to a 26-month custodial sentence in May 2018 for operating an illegal waste site at the farm between 2011 and 2014.

Bruce was prosecuted for six offences in which waste totaling about 25,000 cubic metres was either dumped, buried or burned.

The Environment Agency was joined in an operation on Ridgeway Farm last month by officers from West Mercia Police and the National Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service.

A spokesperson for the Environment Agency said:

The vehicles seized were identified as stolen and the West Mercia Police have started a criminal investigation.

By seizing these vehicles, the multi-agency operation has curtailed the ability of Bruce to commit further environmental offences.

This work shows the Environment Agency is determined to crackdown on waste crime.

Waste crime can have a serious environmental impact which puts communities at risk and undermines legitimate business and the investment and economic growth that go with it.

We support legitimate businesses and we are proactively supporting them by disrupting and stopping the criminal element backed up by the threat of tough enforcement as in this case.

We continue to use intelligence-led approaches to target the most serious crimes and evaluate which interventions are most effective.

If you see or suspect waste crime is being committed we urge you to report it immediately to CrimeStoppers on 0800 555 111.

Waste Crime

January 2020 saw the launch of the Joint Unit for Waste Crime a multi-agency taskforce formally bringing together environmental regulators and law enforcement agencies to tackle serious and organised waste crime which is estimated to cost the UK economy at least £600 million a year and cause great harm to the environment, local communities and businesses.

Read more about the waste crime taskforce.

Waste Crime is becoming more organised, involving networks of career criminals, and tackling this type of illegal activity is more complex.

Companies, local authorities and businesses all have a responsibility to check what happens to their waste.

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