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The Surroundings Company (EA) has declined to provide data on how a lot taxpayers’ time and cash its employees have spent prosecuting a Herefordshire farmer who admitted damaging the protected River Lugg.
Farmers Weekly made a request for data underneath the Freedom of Data Act on 31 March asking the EA to publish particulars of the entire quantity of taxpayers’ cash it had spent to prosecute potato farmer John Worth.
Particularly, the company was requested to supply a breakdown of the entire prices, together with authorized charges and hours spent internally by company employees employed on this case.
See additionally: Farmer pleads responsible to damaging River Lugg
In its written response despatched on 13 Could, the EA mentioned it had thought-about the general public curiosity stability between refusal and disclosure and determined to withhold the knowledge.
“We’re withholding the above as a result of disclosure of the knowledge would adversely have an effect on the flexibility of an individual to obtain a good trial and thereby prejudicing the course of justice,” mentioned the EA in its written response.
“Disclosing this data into the general public area at this stage of the proceedings may result in unwarranted public scrutiny that might outcome within the particular person not receiving a good trial.”
The EA additionally defined why it was unable to supply figures on the entire price to the taxpayer thus far in regards to the prosecution of Mr Worth.
“We don’t maintain this data because the Surroundings Company doesn’t allocate cash and we spend as requested,” it mentioned.
Mr Worth, 67, of Day Home Farm, Kingsland, appeared at Kidderminster Magistrates Courtroom on Wednesday 18 Could.
Responsible pleas
He pleaded responsible to seven costs in relation to finishing up operations on a Website of Particular Scientific Curiosity (SSSI) with out consent, contravening a cease discover, contravening the Environmental Allowing Rules and contravening the Discount and Prevention of Agricultural Diffuse Air pollution Rules.
The fees adopted a joint investigation by the EA and Pure England into actions alongside a 1.5km stretch of the Lugg that Mr Worth is alleged to have taken in November 2020 and a yr later in December 2021.
Bernard Thorogood, a barrister representing the EA and Pure England, instructed the court docket that each would supply a full restoration plan, which Mr Worth will probably be ordered to hold out.
Mr Thorogood mentioned the prices had been “substantial already and would develop to a level”.
He described the prosecution of Mr Worth as a “very substantial train, which has concerned repeated checks by specialists on the situation of the river and all its inhabitants”.
Mr Worth, who was given unconditional bail, is more likely to be sentenced for the offences later this yr on the similar court docket.
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