Council faces huge bill over Maltby quarry

A HOLE in the ground which for years swallowed up tonnes of household rubbish is now set to gobble up a huge chunk of council cash following a shock legal ruling.

A judge has told Rotherham council it must foot a staggering £780,608.78 bill after it broke terms of a licence by failing to restore a Maltby quarry used for landfill.

The ruling came last month at the end of a seven day hearing in Leeds before His Honour Judge Kaye QC.

The question of costs has still to be decided. That issue was put out to another hearing and it could mean the final bill facing the council will rocket.

The council is now considering an appeal, but this week furious Tory councillors who say they were kept in the dark about the costly legal battle said they were “appalled by the secrecy”.

They are angry because the hushed up court room drama only came to light when activist Don Bird wrote to the council’s legal chief, Tim Mumford, asking for details of the claim for £780,608 by quarry owners Ibstock Brick Company against the council.

Hellaby councillor Brian Cutts said: “It seems Rotherham council can afford to hire barristers costing many thousands of pounds to fight a legal issue which seems to be of their making, but they cannot find the money to fund the laundry service or meals on wheels.

“I shall certainly be asking questions at the next council meeting about this fiasco.”

Following his inquiry, Mr Bird received a reply from an official in the council’s legal and democratic service department, outlining the history of the dispute with Ibstock–and for the first time revealing the huge cost to the council.

It said Maltby Quarry had a history of planning permissions granted for the extraction of brick clay.

 In May 1982, proposals were submitted for the final restoration of the quarry in a phased manner following the extraction and processing of brick clay.

The basic proposal was to restore the land for agriculture and return it to the original contours.

The then South Yorkshire County Council resolved to approve the restoration scheme in June 1983.

But the following year, in March 1984, South Yorkshire County Council decided to use part of the quarry for the disposal of controlled waste.

The licence that was at the centre of the litigation was dated 11th April 1984.

The then operators of the quarry agreed to grant South Yorkshire County Council  a licence to tip household waste in part of the quarry for a period of 21 years commencing, April 1st 1984.

The licence contained various conditions binding upon South Yorkshire County Council.

Crucially it said the council must comply with all conditions including the restoration of the site to a proper standard for agricultural use when the tipping of waste was completed and to restore the surface of the site to the reasonable satisfaction of the quarry owner.

That included covering the surface with an adequate depth of soil so that the site was level, properly drained and in all other respects fit for agricultural purposes.

South Yorkshire County Council was abolished in April 1986 by the Local Government Act 1985 and Rotherham council took on its rights and obligations, including those contained within the licence.

Following a public inquiry in March 2003, Ibstock were given permission to extract minerals from the site.

Conditions included a limit on the waste materials that could be deposited for the purposes of restoring the site to onsite mineral waste only and a condition to the effect that all mineral extraction and planning works would be completed by December 2010.

The licence expired on the 31st March 31 2005 and that date part of the site had been filled and restored with household waste. But another area had never been filled, other than a minor deposit of coal extracted from the quarry.

The official added: “His Honor Judge Kaye QC handed down his judgement on the 11th September 2009, whereby he found the council in breach of the licence in that it had not restored the land in question.

“The cost of doing so the judge found to be £780,608.78.”

Cllr John Gilding, the council’s Conservative Group leader said “It’s staggering. This is a cloak and dagger operation of which I have had no knowledge.”

Tory Cllr Tony Mannion added: “This is bad news. I find it appalling that opposition councillors knew nothing about this. All this secrecy is an attempt to save face.”

A council spokeswoman rejected claims that the issue had been cloaked in secrecy.