Fly-tipper fined over lay-by dumping

A sub-contractor who was caught on camera dumping seven tons of tarmac in a Black Country lay-by has been ordered to pay more than £2,700 by magistrates.

Self-employed Jason Craze denied deliberately depositing the load at a fly-tipping blackspot in Bilston, claiming it had poured out accidentally. But chairman of the magistrates bench Kathryn Yarsley told him: "Fly-tipping is taken very seriously – it is a problem, particularly in this area." The two-day trial heard that 32-year-old Craze, who owns one lorry, was a regular sub-contractor for the Wolverhampton-based Tarmac company.

On a Sunday in April last year he had agreed to pick up 20 tons of top-coat asphalt from a depot in Stoke-on-Trent and take it to Bedworth, near Coventry. About seven tons of the material was not used and was due to be taken to a tip-off point, the court heard.

But instead Craze, of Hart Road, Wednesfield, came off the M6 on the way back to the depot and emptied the load from his lorry in a lay-by in Murdoch Road.

In his defence, he said that "topping" was too expensive to consider dumping and he would have been paid more than £100 for what was left.

He claimed he had pulled off the motorway to check on the condition of the asphalt.

But after inspecting it, he failed to secure the tailgate of the tipper truck properly and when the lorry lurched backwards, the asphalt poured out. "Something caught my eye in the mirror and I jumped out to see what had happened," he told the court. I was in shock, I couldn't believe what I'd done."

He claimed he wrote to the council telling them what he had done, but the authority had no record of the correspondence. Amy Jacobs, for the council, accused Craze of lying about the letter and suggested there were other places he could have stopped before Murdoch Road, five miles off the M6.

Wolverhampton magistrates said the CCTV evidence had been "crucial" in coming to their decision.

Craze was fined £1,000 and ordered to pay £1,167 court costs, plus £992 for the removal of the tarmac.