Inglenorth - a hardcore victory
SOURCE: CIWM, SEPTEMBER 2009
The High Court recently upheld a magistrates’ decision to dismiss a waste prosecution on the basis that hardcore from a demolished building was not waste, even when the demolition was on Site A and the reuse was on Site B. The crucial factor was that the party producing the demolition material intended for it to be reused.
The decision flies in the face of the usual EA presumption that off-site reuse implies that the material is waste. In truth, there has never been any justification for that presumption.
One doubtful aspect is that the court focused on the status of the materials at the point where they were re-used, rather than the point at which they were produced.
Arguably this is incorrect, since if materials have already become waste, their subsequent re-use cannot ‘cure’ them of their waste status. But in this case the mis-focus made no difference to the outcome, as the case happened to concern the same producer and re-user – whose lack of intention to discard continued from production through to re-use.
The case is refreshing in stepping away from the narrow “by-products” argument (certainty of re-use etc) and looking instead at the simple issue of whether anything has been discarded.
A similar case in Northern Ireland in 2007 reached the opposite result, concluding that excavated material WAS waste – which simply goes to show (a) that each case gets decided on its own merits and (b) that evidence/paperwork showing lack of intention to discard can be vital.
AUTHOR: Vincent Brown
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