In November 2020, a fire broke out at one of the couple’s sites in Spring Mill Street, Bradford, where more than 600,000 tires had been stored.
The fire caused severe disruption in movement and led to the closure of local schools and businesses. More than 14,300 students were affected by the closures and it took only about a hundred firefighters to bring the blaze under maximum control, the Environment Agency said.
Stuart Bedford, 62, was sentenced to 12 and 8 months in prison for running illegal waste treatment operations in Bradford and Doncaster.
Beford did not have the required environmental permit to operate the sites and discovered it had stored tea in a way that could contaminate the environment or harm human health.
His wife Vicky Bedford, 51, sentenced to a 12-month network order and a 15-day Rehabilitation Activity Obligation (RAR) for her involvement in the sites.
He was paid to take those tires and valued them at Bradford at one million pounds.
In October 2020, before the fire, Bradford operators obtained a compliance notice requiring them to clean their tires through Environment Agency officials.
Mr and Mrs Bedford were arrested in Spain after foreign arrest warrants were issued against them and returned to the UK.
In pronouncing the sentence, Judge HHJ Gibson said: “Stuart Bedford, I have no doubt that you have intentionally damaged the law.
“You delighted in storing and discarding tires. I knew from the beginning that the number of tires I was accumulating at the site was far greater than I could have legitimately stored under an exemption granted for that site. . .
«. . . As for the fireplace itself, you were reckless in the popular sense of the word. You still put the tires away, no matter the risk. You were paid to take those tyres and you valued them at Bradford at £1 million. .
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