A LANDOWNER has been ordered to pay more than £5,000 for illegally keeping a large amount of waste wood at a site in Bicester.

Gordon Jones appeared at Banbury Magistrates’ Court last Tuesday after being charged with failing to comply with an order requiring him to remove waste.

The court heard the 66-year-old, of The Old Dairy, The Green, Hethe, near Bicester had accumulated an extensive amount of waste wood at his Field Farm site – an agricultural holding situated in Bainton Crossroads, Stoke Lyne, Bicester.

Reports were received by the Environment Agency of deposit and storage of waste wood in 2013. Agency officers Jack Knight and Steven Cave visited the site and recorded the storage of a very large deposit of waste wood, pallets and shredded wood on the south side of the land.

A search for waste exemptions on the land - which would have allowed Jones to store the wood - by Mr Cave found a number of exemptions for agricultural waste under Jones’s name.

But it was discovered these were not relevant to his deposit of waste wood.

Jones had previously denied the charge but later changed his plea and was fined £2,000 and ordered to pay £3,000 costs and a £120 victim surcharge. After the case, Mr Knight said: “Waste crime such as this puts the environment at risk from fire. We offered advice to Mr Jones on a number of occasions with regards to him removing the waste wood during our site visits.”

Cherwell District Council lead member for clean and green, Debbie Pickford, said: “Generally if people are keeping a lot of waste, they may not think it does harm but obviously, like in this case, the Environment Agency thought it was doing harm.

“If people are asked [to clear up waste], they will be given leniency but if they do not take this seriously then the courts will be involved.”