A JUDGE has waived a costs order issued against a farmer’s son, who he jailed for illegal waste dumping last month.

Stuart Christopher McCarroll was given a 14-month prison sentence at Durham Crown Court on April 1, after admitting four charges of running an illegal waste operation and one relating to the incineration of rubbish.

He was also ordered to pay the Environment Agency's £13,123 prosecution costs.

It stemmed from several visits by the agency to his father’s holding, Sun Ridge Farm, at Thornley, County Durham, last year.

The court heard agency inspectors were met by evidence of dumping, “on an industrial scale”.

McCarroll, who ran a skip hire business, ignored repeated warnings not to dump waste on the site, which was unlicensed for such activity.

He claimed he sought exemptions allowing him to carry out restricted activities.

But Lee Fish, for the agency, said the waste activity at the farm far exceeded anything permitted by exemptions.

Although there was evidence the site had been tidied on further visits by inspectors, the dumping persisted.

When interviewed, last October, McCarroll claimed the site was being tidied as a planning inspector was due to visit over a planning application for development of a waste transfer station at the farm.

Mr Fish said the defendant, effectively, used the site as, “a free tipping ground”, without having paid the £3,000 for the necessary permit.

The case was brought back to court under the slip rule, to adjust sentences, as Mr Byrne said as a result of his business folding and the ensuing clear-up bill, the defendant has no means to meet the costs order.

Judge Simon Hickey agreed to quash his original costs order, but the other aspects of the sentence remain in place.