The Landfill Tax bonanza

April 8, 2000

One source of funding that was to prove crucial to NCEEM's plans was the controversial Landfill Tax scheme.

NCEEM itself received £100,000 from the scheme, through the Wigan based Greenbank Trust, sometime in mid 1999. NCEEM directors were expecting a further £200,000 from the same source, but it never materialised.

NCEEM's predecessor, the KBF Waste Minimisation Project, got 2 grants totalling £55,000 from the Bradford Environmental Action Trust (BEAT) in December 1998.

NCEEM director John Dennis had close links to both sources of funds.

Landfill Tax

In an attempt to encourage recycling schemes for waste, the government introduced a Landfill Tax in October 1996. The tax, which is set to increase annually, is collected by Landfill operators and paid to Customs and Excise.

Predictably, the tax led to a massive increase in illegal dumping. In response the government decided to divert some of the tax into environmental improvement schemes, such as cleaning up the results of the fly tipping. But they were anxious to avoid any increase in public expenditure, so they devised an elaborate scheme whereby landfill operators could instead donate 20% of the tax to an approved "environmental body". To encourage this, landfill operators were given a say in how the money should be spent.

BEAT

[BEAT made many good small landfill grants] Anyone could set up an "environmental body", so long as they were approved by another agency - ENTRUST - which was established to oversee the scheme.

The Bradford Environmental Action Trust (BEAT) registered as an environmental body in 1997 and began receiving around £300,000 per year in landfill tax money, mainly from the local waste operators Wastepoint Ltd . Wastepoint operate the controversial landfill site at Manywells Quarry.

Many small sums were given to local voluntary environmental projects.

Meanwhile John Dennis, an environmental consultant, helped the KBF Waste Minimisation Project to apply for 2 grants from BEAT totaling £55,000. Both were approved by the BEAT Landfill Tax sub-committee and paid out in December 1998, which was not surprising since Dennis was a member of that sub-committee and indeed was appointed as BEAT's chairman in October that year.

BEAT refused to give details of the grants. BEAT Company Secretary Dave Melling told KDIS:

"I must inform you that the Landfill Tax Regulatory Body ENTRUST have confirmed that all projects funded in any part by Landfill Tax Credits are of a private nature and strictly confidential. BEAT has therefore been instructed to release no information to you regarding this or any other project".

Entrust deny this. They told KDIS: "It is a matter for the individual environmental body whether they wish to provide information on their projects."

One of the grants was for a "schools web site project" at £27,000. KBF claimed it would be an "innovative waste minimisation syllabus for schools, which will be accessed via the Internet and has been designed to support a range of national curriculum subject areas which touch on waste minimisation and waste management."

But all there was to show for it were 3 paltry web pages on the KBF Waste Minimisation web site. That works out at £9,000 a page. None the less, this project was approved as successfully "completed" by John Dennis and Dave Melling in December 1999.

John Dennis denies any conflict of interest. He said his work for KBF didn't involve the 2 projects after the funds were obtained: "I was very very careful to say that I don't want to work on these projects and I didn't work on either of the 2 projects".

The website itself was removed last month, shortly after KDIS posted its first article on the collapse of NCEEM and KBF.

Greenbank Trust

John Dennis continued his employment with A H Leech Son & Dean as an environmental consultant when he became a director of NCEEM. Indeed he was working 2 days a week for NCEEM in this capacity.

In March 1997 the directors of A H Leech, Christopher and David Baybutt, had set up the Greenbank Trust as an "environmental body" for distributing landfill tax credits. The Greenbank Trust was run from A H Leech's office in Wigan.

The Baybutt's were joined on the Trust's board by Peter Casey, a landfill operator and director of Park Pit Landfill Ltd. Park Pit were the main contributors of the tax credits to the Greenbank Trust, which amounted to around £1 million a year.

One of John Dennis's first jobs at NCEEM was to apply to the Greenbank Trust for £100,000 in landfill tax grants, which of course was quickly forthcoming.

Much of this money was due to find it's way back to A H Leech in the form of consultancy fees. When NCEEM collapsed A H Leech was owed £33,000.

Neither the Greenbank Trust nor Entrust would give any details as to the purpose of this grant. A spokesperson for Entrust told KDIS:

"I can confirm that Greenbank Trust have informed ENTRUST that the contributions forwarded to the NCEEM were to be spent on approved objects under the regulations. Following the collapse of KBF and NCEEM we are currently seeking further information from the Greenbank Trust - in order to confirm compliant spending."

John Dennis again denied any conflict of interest. He told KDIS that the Greenbank Trust has "always been run as a seperate entity, because it has to be." He also said that he's never hidden the connection between A H Leech and the Trust:

"We had a notice on our door. It said 'Welcome to A H Leech Son & Dean' and then made reference to the Greenbank web site, explaining the difference between all the parts of the Greenbank thing and describes A H Leech's role... That was on our door for years and I never made any secret of the fact.."

There appears to be nothing in the Entrust regulations to prevent such close links between those distributing the landfill tax credits and those receiving them.

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