A SCRAP car dealer from Tavistock who ran an unlicensed business from a yard in Okehampton was last week given a three-year conditional discharge by magistrates in Exeter. Clifford Mennell, 40, of Daucus Close, pleaded guilty to five offences under the Environmental Protection Act of treating, keeping or disposing of waste motor vehicles and parts without a license at The Pallet Exchange on North Road Industrial Estate. The court heard Environment Agency officers visited the site last April after reports that waste vehicles were being stored there. Officers saw eleven vehicles, some stacked at double height, plus piles of tyres, two fridges and other waste. When interviewed, Mr Mennell said the vehicles were being temporarily stored while his lorry, licensed to transport waste cars, was off the road. But when Environment Agency officers returned on April 26, they saw five crushed vehicles which had been positioned behind plastic containers. The agency told magistrates Mr Mennell had been given verbal and written advice about storing waste cars, yet advertisements asking for scrap vehicles to be taken to the site were seen in the local paper twice in January last year. Mackenzie Robinson, defending, said: ?There was no threat to the environment from the stored cars. ?The cars were in temporary and secure storage before being disposed of in an approved way. The prosecution was brought simply because Mr Mennell did not hold a waste management licence.? But Robert Hardwood of the Environment Agency told magistrates: ?This offender persisted in his illegal activities despite numerous visits and verbal and written advice. His relentless flouting of the law could not go on.?
