Residents complain of ‘Stench of death’ at Boosbeck abattoir

Villagers in Boosbeck, east Cleveland, are keeping up the pressure on the local authority to tackle the problem they maintain has been blighting their lives for more than three years.

Throughout the summer, angry residents continued to write to Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council as the warm weather exasperated the problem meaning many villagers were unable to leave their windows open.

Marlene Brown, who lives near the slaughterhouse, contacted the council’s cabinet member for health and housing, Cllr Lynn Pallister, again late last week to express her frustration at the continuing problem.

She said: “It’s a regular occurrence the stench of death lingers around the village but today is particularly bad. This should not be happening.

“It’s only a few weeks ago you were saying how the council had promised the residents of Boosbeck this wouldn’t be allowed to continue. So why is it?”

Residents were hoping that progress would be made one the owners of the business, Banaras Halal Meats, put it into administration.

The Food Standards Agency confirmed it had handed a new licence to BHM Food Group Ltd , which runs meat processing operations at the controversial slaughterhouse in Boosbeck.

The company’s director is Nadeem Banaras, who is also listed as a director at Banaras Halal Meats - which ran the High Street site before it went into administration in May.

The Food Standards Agency had launched a prosecution against the firm but the 12 food hygiene breaches were discontinued after the business was put in administration.

Previously, Cllr Pallister has defended the council’s actions.

She said: “Until very recently, there had been no significant issues with the abattoir for several months since it ceased slaughtering and began operating as a meat processing business.”

The councillor was unavailable for comment last night while The Northern Echo was unable to contact anyone from Banaras Halal Meats.