Poultry plant issued with improvement notice
A poultry slaughterhouse in Yorkshire has been issued with an improvement notice by the Environment Agency (EA) after multiple breaches of its operating licence were discovered.
The EA said that their concerns with the Chesterfield Poultry plant near Bingley were mainly based on odours coming from the plant.
Local residents have been highly critical of the operation of the plant. One local councillor has said that people’s lives were being “blighted” by the odours. There has also been a concern over increased lorry movements.
Tim Shaw, of the EA’s pollution prevention and control team, commented: “We have notified the company of these breaches and have asked them to remedy them. We expect that this may help to improve the situation, but it is unlikely to eliminate odours from the site.”
If the improvement notices are not conformed with, the company could face a maximum fine of up to 10% of its turnover.
Chesterfield Poultry became the operator of the unit in 2009, taking over from the The Haven Poultry Farm, and massively increased production.
Chesterfield Poultry has had a controversial history. In 2010 one of its directors, in charge of the plant in Clay Cross, Derbyshire, was jailed for two years for bringing illegal immigrants into the country to work for less than the minimum wage.
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