A Norfolk poultry slaughterhouse has been fined £300,000 for failing to stop odour pollution affecting the lives of people living and working in Attleborough.
A court heard that the Environment Agency received nearly 350 complaints from local people and businesses in the area between 2019 and 2021.
District judge Andrew King heard the abattoir had broken or damaged doors and walls, a roof so weak it collapsed, and another part of the site unsafe for Environment Agency staff to enter.
He acknowledged practices at Banham Poultry Ltd had a ‘significant effect on quality of life’ in the town.
Banham, now under new management from the time of the offending, had a permit from the EA to slaughter up to 67 million birds a year, more than a million every week.
The agency warned the company to act after 9 complaints about the slaughterhouse were made early in 2019, coinciding with waste blood kept on site too long.
Believing the company had breached its permit for managing smells, investigators gave Banham an enforcement notice to limit or prevent odours leaving the boundary of the abattoir.
Sophie Cousins, who led the investigation into the abattoir for the EA said: "Banham Poultry failed to invest in odour-prevention. People living and working nearby were badly affected over a long period of time.
"The EA decided on prosecution after Banham missed many chances to comply with the law. We gave them time and assistance to put matters right, but the problems just mounted up."
She added: "The site’s odour management plan, meant to control the effect of work on the community, was ‘ripped up’, according to one employee.
"Another member of staff wrote in an e-mail in 2019 they were ‘embarrassed…’ and couldn’t defend the company’s poor management of the site, adding ‘we stink’."
The company pleaded guilty to failing to keep activities free from odour levels likely to cause pollution outside the abattoir between January 2019 and September 2021.
Banham also admitted not complying with an enforcement notice served on it by the EA that set out steps they should have taken to limit or prevent odours leaving the site.
On 15 September 2022, Chelmsford magistrates’ court ruled the offences as reckless culpability. Banham was fined £300,000 and ordered to pay over £67,000 in costs and a victim surcharge of £170.
