NRI Gujarati fined £ 16,000 for storing 5 ft mountain of rotting waste in back garden

London, England, 21 December 2011

Croydon Magistrates’ Court in England found NRI Gujarati Mukesh Patel responsible for storing the waste in his back garden and fined him £10,000. The court also ordered to pay prosecution costs of £6,000 and a victim surcharge of £15.

According to court hearing, Mukesh Patel had left a 5ft mountain of rotting rubbish in his back garden. The smell was so offensive to his neighbours that they were unable to use rooms backing on to the garden. Patel dumped piles of household and builders waste, old clothes, bed linen, tree cuttings, scrap wood and electrical items there. It became so bad that the Environment Agency decided to prosecute.

Patel, 57, pleaded not guilty to keeping waste in a manner likely to cause pollution of the environment or harm to human health at the house in Croydon, south London.

Croydon magistrates heard there was planning permission for the house to be converted into four flats and was undergoing renovation.

But the amount of material dumped in the back garden was not consistent with any work being carried out.

We will not allow unscrupulous individuals or companies to blight people’s lives and profit in the process by keeping rubbish wherever they choose

Patel claimed he had employed a waste carrier to remove some of the rubbish that had accumulated but did not check if the carrier was licensed.

He claimed he knew nothing about the rubbish that had been put there.

Environmental crime officer Colin Green said: “The amount of waste here was simply shocking. It made life very unpleasant for nearby residents for many months.”

Between October and December 2009, police and a council officer said they had seen men unloading large bags of rubbish from a transit van into an overloaded skip nearby, and later in the rear garden of the Croydon address.

In January, a council officer had visited the site and estimated the waste was piled as high as five feet in some places.