Staff at a Cowley Road restaurant were dumping waste at a bus stop near Wheatley, a court heard.
Staff at South Oxfordshire District Council had launched an investigation after bin bags containing food rubbish were left at the Holton Turn off the A40 on March 3 – around the corner from Wheatley Park School.
Oxford Magistrates’ Court heard on Friday (August 25) that a discarded food order in amongst the refuse led the investigators straight to Cowley Road restaurant Shiraz Persian.
Advocate Suzanne Green, for the district council, said another member of staff at the local authority thought the waste dumped in March looked similar to rubbish fly-tipped in January and February.
There had been ‘no leads’ in those two incidents and so the probes had to be shelved.
Ms Green said: “Having seen the photographs of the waste found fly-tipped on March 3, he was struck by similarities in the type of waste, for instance there was the same brand of oil drums.”
Letters were sent to the owner of the restaurant, Masood Khanloo, and he was eventually interviewed in November last year.
He confirmed that when he took over the running of the Shiraz restaurant he had no contract in place for waste disposal.
He initially used Oxford City Council refuse bags; he or his staff members would take rubbish away to dispose of it themselves. He tried to take waste to the council tip but ‘did not have a permit’.
“He said he had worked previously in kitchens in London for approximately 21 years but said he didn’t know the restaurant needed to have a waste contract in place,” Ms Green told the court.
He produced a contract with waste management company Biffa. However, this began on May 30 almost three months after the fly-tipped rubbish was discovered in Wheatley.
Ms Green, for the council, said: “The impact on local authorities [of fly-tipping] is that not only is it unsightly and poses a risk [to health] but it costs councils in excess of £80,000 a year in clean-up costs.”
She made it clear that the waste was not hazardous. It did however include foodstuffs, running the risk of encouraging ‘vermin’.
Appearing before the Oxford magistrates on Friday, Mr Khanloo, 45, entered guilty pleas on behalf of Shiraz Persian’s parent company Fine Persian Dishes Ltd to five counts of breaching waste disposal regulations.
Mitigating, Kate Macnab said Mr Khanloo had contacted the council when he first took over the restaurant to try and arrange waste collection. However, there was nowhere to store the bin. A contract was now in place with Biffa, with the rubbish collected several times a week.
The company was fined £5,000 and ordered to pay £1,569 in costs and surcharge.
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