A café owner who thought it was ok to put his rubbish in other people’s bins rather than pay to have it collected – like everyone else does – has been ordered to pay £4,162.50.
David Herbert has until December 22 to pay up.
If he doesn’t a judge has said he must serve 45 days in prison.
In 2019, the council’s Environmental Health team was told that the owners of Arizona Café, Hollins Road weren’t getting rid of their waste properly.
By law all businesses must be able to produce trade waste documentation.
This shows they have a contract in place with a licensed waste collection service.
Enforcement officers visited the property and Herbert was asked to produce his documentation.
When he failed to produce them, he was issued with a fixed penalty notice of £300, which would have been reduced to £200 if he had paid within 14 days.
The fined was not paid so court proceedings were started.
Herbert failed to turn up for court on the day his case was due to be heard so a warrant for his arrest was issued.
He attended court after the warrant was executed and elected to have his case heard in Crown Court.
The case was heard at Manchester Crown Court and he was found guilty of one charge of failing in duty of care in relation to waste as he failed to produce waste transfer notes when asked.
The judge ordered Herbert to pay a fine of £1,200 and costs of £2,962.50
Councillor Amanda Chadderton, Deputy Leader of Oldham Council and Cabinet member for Neighbourhoods, said: “Herbert thought it was fine to just dump his rubbish where he wanted and let someone else pay for it to be collected.
“All businesses must have the correct trade waste documentation in place – if they don’t then they can expect action to be taken against them.
“If Herbert had acted responsibly, like the vast majority of Oldham business owners do, he could have saved himself a lot of money.”
Arizona Café is no longer trading.
Oldham Council is cracking down on Environmental crime as part of our Don’t Trash Oldham campaign and since it started in September last year we have fined 301 people and successfully prosecuted another 18.