A waste company owner has been ordered to hand over more than £1.4 million for illegally dumping in excess of 4,275t of waste across England on sites including farmland.
A nationwide investigation carried out by the Environment Agency uncovered a network of 16 illegal dumping sites that stretched from the north-east to the south coast of England.
The dump sites included farms, a historic manor house, and a nature reserve.
Varun Datta, 36, of Little Chester Street, London, was ordered to pay £1.1 million, reflecting the financial benefit from his crimes, plus £100,000 in compensation and £200,000 in prosecution costs.
After pleading not guilty in 2023, Datta subsequently pleaded guilty in June 2025 to knowingly causing controlled waste to be deposited at 16 sites. The total weight of the waste was around 4,275t.
He was also given a prison sentence of four months suspended for 18 months, along with 30 days’ rehabilitation and 200 hours of unpaid work.
The case concluded in Birmingham Crown Court last Friday, 13 February, involved the prosecution of two other men, with one being fined and the other facing a suspended sentence, rehabilitation and unpaid work. Warrants for the arrest of two other men are still active.
Datta became a registered waste broker through his company, Atkins Recycling Ltd. In 2015, he began claiming waste the company handled was being sent to a legal site at Kiveton Park, near Sheffield.
In actuality, the loads were being diverted to unlicensed dumps around the country. It is alleged that an associate, Sandeep Golechha, 55, of Wheatley Close, London, helped to falsify weighbridge documents to cover up the illegal acts.
Emma Viner, enforcement and investigations manager in the Environment Agency‘s National Environmental Crime Unit, said: “We are glad to see the perpetrators brought to justice in this appalling case.
“Despite their attempts to conceal their criminality, our in-depth investigation spanning the length and breadth of the country ultimately uncovered those responsible.”
The majority of the waste dumped was mixed municipal waste, wrapped in plastic to form bales resembling silage bales.
They were dumped on farmlands and other locations, such as Middleton Nature Reserve and Rhyddings Mill, Stonebridge Lane, Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire.
Photos of the dumped bales discovered at various sites are included in the gallery below:
The offences were branded as “reckless” by Judge Paul Farrar KC.
He said: “Smell and flies were a feature at some of the illegal sites and caused a localised adverse effect to air quality.”
The judge also noted that landowners were ““forced to incur substantial costs in removing the illegal waste”.
No environmental permit or valid exemption was in place at any of the sites, which were spread across Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Lancashire, Kent, Surrey, Rutland and Middlesborough.
The £100,000 in compensation to be paid by Datta relates to the dumping at the former Sulzer Dowding Mills Factory site in Middlesbrough, as well as the Middleton Nature Reserve in Lancashire.
Middlesborough Council will receive £70,000 towards the cost of the clean-up, while £30,000 will be awarded to the Lancashire Wildlife Trust for the future management of the Middleton Nature Reserve.
