A SALISBURY man who operated waste collection services on Facebook without having the correct licence has been slapped with fines and court costs of £4,037.93.

Jamie Alexander Kerley, aged 30, of Woodbury Rise, Salisbury pleaded guilty to four environmental offences at Swindon Magistrates Court on Monday (October 14).

The offences included transporting controlled waste without an upper tier waste carriers licence, failing to produce authority to transport controlled waste when requested to do so by Wiltshire Council, failure to produce waste transfer notes in relation to waste he had collected and for operating as an unlicensed scrap metal collector.

Kerley, owner and managing director of Jck Tree Care Ltd, was due to appear before Salisbury Magistrates on September 9 but failed to attend to enter a plea - this resulted in the court issuing a warrant for his arrest.

He was subsequently arrested on Saturday, October 12 in Portsmouth, transported to Swindon and held in custody for two days until his hearing on October 14, where he pleaded guilty to all charges.

The court heard Kerley was previously prosecuted by Wiltshire Council in February 2017 for eight counts of fly-tipping around Wiltshire, which resulted in him serving a three-month prison sentence.

Wiltshire Council’s Environmental Enforcement team investigated the 30-year-old following a report from a member of public, who spotted him advertising for waste collection services on Facebook, despite having no licence to do so and having previous convictions for fly-tipping.

He was served with a formal legal notice that required him to produce waste transfer notes to Wiltshire Council, which would have shown how he had been disposing of the waste lawfully, which he had collected from his recent Facebook ‘tip run’ adverts.

He was unable to produce any of the requested documentation and could not demonstrate to the council that he had been lawfully disposing of waste at a commercial waste tip.

He was also unable to produce the correct upper tier waste carriers licence that is required to transport non-green waste.

He failed to pay two fixed penalty notices of £300. And a further investigation revealed he had also been dealing in scrap metal in the Wiltshire area without being licensed.

The court also heard he was still advertising for services on Facebook selling sites across Wiltshire right up until the day of his arrest on October 12.

And was falsely advertising that he was correctly licensed to take waste away.

The magistrates ordered him to cease advertising for waste clearance services on social media and to remove the adverts on Facebook selling sites.

Councillor Bridget Wayman, the council’s waste chief, said: “This prosecution highlights the important role the public plays in thoroughly checking the credentials of anyone they pay to take their waste.”