One of the country's largest egg producers has been
fined £65,000 for 13 separate breaches of environmental
permitting legislation. L J Fairburn was sentenced by the Skegness
Magistrates' Court in September 2012 following years of
non-compliance. This article looks at the application of the
permitting regime in this case and provides a glance at the
immediate future for the system.
The case
The prosecution was concerned with five L J Fairburn operated
sites. All the premises were in Lincolnshire and all exceeded the
40,000 bird threshold following which an Environmental Permit is
required. All the sites were operating without any Permit in place
and had been doing so for varying periods between February 2007 and
February 2012. One of the sites at Bilsby at one stage boasted a
bird population of 186,810, more than four times the number of
birds it should have housed.
