Fine or jail for cafe owner who dumped rubbish in other people's bins

A cafe owner from Oldham who dumped rubbish in his neighbours' bins has been fined.

David Herbert - owner of Arizona Cafe on Hollins Road was ordered to pay a fine of £1200 and costs of £2,962.50 at Manchester Crown Court.

In 2019, the council’s Environmental Health team was told that the owners of the cafe were not disposing of their waste appropriately.

By law, all businesses must be able to produce trade waste documentation showing 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.

However, the fine was not paid and court proceedings were started.

Herbert failed to turn up for court and 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 cafe owner 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.

Herbert has until December 22 to pay the full £4,162.50 or serve 45 days in prison.

Oldham Council is cracking down on environmental crime as part of the Don’t Trash Oldham campaign. Since it started in September last year 301 people have been fined and a further 18 have been prosecuted.

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.

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