Owners of iconic Nottinghamshire hotel fined £90,000 for polluting River Meden with sewage

Bourne Leisure Limited, which runs the Thoresby Hall Hotel, near Ollerton, admitted three charges brought by the Environment Agency, after it emerged that sewage pumped directly into the river exceeded permitted levels of toxins.

The company is allowed to shed waste into the Meden, but has to adhere to strict rules about levels of biochemical oxygen, suspended solids and ammoniacal nitrogen in the discharge - which came from toilets, kitchens and swimming pool water.

The incidents took place between April 2015 and September 2017, said Kevin Slack, prosecuting for the Environment Agency at Mansfield Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday, March 4.

He said: “The hotel operates its own sewerage system which allows the company to discharge effluent into the Rover Meden. There is a two-and-a-half year period where the defendant repeatedly breached the contamination levels.”

He told the court that automated systems put in place to alert staff of dangerous contamination levels had failed, along with machinery designed to prevent fat running into the river from commercial kitchens, and that on occasion levels had been between double and five times permitted levels.

He also said there had been a failure in manual checks over a two-week period, where staff were supposed to record pollution levels report them to management.

“Either the checks were not being carried out or they were not being recorded properly,” he said. “The company was insufficiently prompt to act to prevent the breaches occurring.”

He added that the pollution levels caused had been relatively low, but on one occasion an Environment Agency worker had observed a 15-metre-long “milky cloud coming down the river from the hotel.

On one occasion tankers had been brought in to ship away contaminated waste to prevent pollution, but this was after they had been notified by the Environment Agency that contamination was present.

The company, based in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, has previous convictions for environmental pollution from 2002 at a site in Dorset, and another dating to 2007, again at Thoresby.

Bourne admitted three counts of failing to comply with/contravening the requirements of an environmental permit condition.

Mitigating, David Young said: “The question of negligence has been conceded but it’s low culpability, I would submit, and when it came to dealing with the Environment Agency the company cooperated fully.”

Speaking about the previous conviction at Thoresby, he added: “The actual offending took place in 2005 - that’s 15 years ago. There have been no further issues since 2017.”

District Judge Jonathan Taaffe fined the company £30,000 for each of the charges, totalling £90,000. He also ordered Bourne to pay prosecution costs of £44,518 and a £170 victim surcharge.

He said: “This was negligent and, as a whole, the company did not take reasonable care, or put in place systems to prevent it.”