Recycling firm owner jailed following fire

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The director of a Derbyshire-based recycling firm has been sent to prison for ten months following a fire at his facility.
Arcwood Recycling Ltd sole director Luke Barker was jailed and banned from being a company director for eight years by a Judge at a hearing at Derby Crown Court.
He pleaded guilty to four safety failures that put people “at risk of death or serious injury”.
A blaze began at the wood recycling facility in September 2012 and fire fighters attended for nine days in attempts to put it out and at a cost of £107,000.
The Environment Agency also incurred £200,000 of costs in minimising the impacts of the water used to put out the fire on wildlife. However, despite this, a 6km stretch of the Erewash canal was affected and almost 450lb of fish were killed.
Judge Jonathan Gosling said: “This was not incompetence, this was a flagrant disregard for the law. You were motivated by profit and mercifully no death or injury occurred.
“The consequence of this catastrophic fire was that millions of gallons of water had to be deployed by the fire service, which ran off into the canal.”