THE boss of a Pontypool recycling facility which was paid £193,000 of taxpayer’s money to sort recycling material but breached numerous permits and environmental conditions has been handed a suspended jail sentence.

Christopher Baylis appeared at Cardiff Crown Court on Monday, February 8, after previously admitting three counts of allowing the operation of a regulated facility, Thorncroft Recycling in the Polo Grounds Industrial Estate in New Inn, without a permit and two of failing to properly store waste. He had also pleaded guilty to failing to comply with an enforcement notice.

Prosecutor Alex Greenwood told the court the site had been run on behalf of Refac Ltd and a permit to operate it had been issued to Thorncroft Steel – of which Baylis was the director and sole shareholder – in October 2013.

Later, when Thorncroft Steel went into administration, another company named Thorncroft Recycling Waste Ltd, which Baylis - of Black Barn Farm, Aston Sandford, Buckinghamshire - was also involved in the running of, took over at the site.

Among the organisations it obtained contracts from were Caerphilly County Borough Council, which contracted the firm to receive and sort mixed recycling at an agreed cost of £40 per tonne, an agreement from which the company made more than £193,000 between December 2013 and October 2014.

But Mr Greenwood said officers from Natural Resources Wales carried out a routine inspection at the site on January 15, 2014, and found piles of waste and recycling being stored outside, in conflict with its licence, and the drainage at the facility was not being properly sealed.

The agency carried out a number of further visits to the site and wrote to Baylis on multiple occasions in the following weeks and months asking him to put the situation right, but he failed to comply.

Ultimately the landlord, Pontypool Park Estate, had to clear the more than 5,000 tonnes of waste left at the site, at a cost to itself of £723,000. The company is currently seeking compensation, with a hearing to be heard at a later date.

Rishi Nathwani, defending, said some of the waste on the site had been left there by a previous company, and the firm had been given a permit to operate so it was able to clear it away.

“It wasn’t just flagrantly saying we are going to take more waste,” he said.

“There was an attempt to deal with it.

“It was just too much for them.”

Recorder Peter Griffiths handed Baylis a 12-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, and banned him from having any involvement in the running of a company for the next five years.

Balyis’ co-director Susan Howlett, aged 45, of Snipe Cottage, Grouse Lane, Nantyglo, Blaenau Gwent, also appeared in court, where she pleaded not guilty to three counts of consenting or conniving to operate the site between January 2014 and December the same year.

But the court heard she had been handed cautions for neglectfully committing the three offences and the prosecution offered no evidence in connection with the charges.