A FORMER Royal British Legion officer was ordered to pay more than £3,600 for dumping controlled waste without a permit.

Lorry driver Steve Radband, 53, admitted dumping 12 lorryloads of soil at a farm in West Oxfordshire when he appeared at Oxford Crown Court on Thursday.

He was being sentenced alongside the owner of Aylesbury Mushroom Farms, Francis Stewart-Wood, who admitted two of the same charges, one on behalf of his company.

The charge was “to cause the deposition, without a licence, of controlled waste in or on land”.

The prosecution was brought by the Environment Agency after officers visited the farm in Black Bourton in June 2012 and discovered waste being dumped without a permit.

Prosecutor Mark Watson told the court that Stewart-Wood had been looking for some kind of soil to mix with his mushroom compost to make it go further.

He asked Radband if he had any ideas where to get some, and Radband put him in touch with a London waste firm which said it could provide waste soil.

That firm gave Stewart-Wood a sample and the two companies agreed for about 3,000 tonnes to be brought to the farm.

There, Stewart-Wood had topsoil pulled back off the land so the waste soil could be deposited beneath, between January and June 2012.

Radband, of Fox Close, Bampton, delivered 12 loads of the soil to the site between January and June 2012 with his company SJ Radband Haulage Ltd, which no longer exists.

He said he only later found out the farm did not have a permit or “exemption” for that sort of waste.

His barrister Nigel Daly said his client was guilty of “not making one phone call” to the EA to check if the farm had such a permit.

Sentencing the pair, Judge Ian Pringle said: “It is your responsibility to have the exemptions if you rely on them.”

He said Stewart-Wood had been “reckless” in regard to the law, while Radband had been less culpable and simply “negligent”.

Judge Pringle ordered Radband to pay a £1,600 fine, £2,000 legal costs and a £15 victim surcharge.

He ordered Stewart-Wood and his company, of which he is sole director, to pay a total of £14,000 in fines, £4,000 costs and £30 in victim surcharges.

The judge said the costs were “substantial” but that the Environment Agency had to put an “awful lot of work” into bringing such prosecutions.