Taylor Wimpey cleared of sewage spill pumping
Getty ImagesHouse builder Taylor Wimpey has been cleared of illegally pumping sewage into a ditch after prosecutors' key eyewitness said he did not actually see the alleged unlawful act.
The firm was building homes in Sedgefield, County, Durham, in September 2019 when a drain burst after becoming blocked by debris, Newcastle Crown Court heard.
The Environment Agency said workers pumped the overspill into a ditch leading to Shotton Beck, but their main witness told jurors he did not actually see any pumping.
The firm had admitted being responsible for the sewage spillage, for which it will be sentenced at a later date, but denied pumping any of it into the ditch.
The trial had opened with prosecutor Ben Thomas, representing the Environment Agency, outlining the case against Taylor Wimpey.
On 17 September 2019, a sewage pipe at the Eden Gardens estate became blocked by construction debris which had fallen through a manhole cover damaged by heavy vehicles, he said.
As a result, the pipe burst with sewage spilling on to the building site and into a nearby fresh water ditch, a tributary of Shotton Beck, the court heard.
Taylor Wimpey then "pumped the escaped sewage from their flooded site directly" into the ditch, Thomas said, which was "an offence".
'Got it wrong'
The prosecution case relied heavily on the testimony of a pollution controller for Northumbrian Water, which was responsible for transporting and treating sewage.
He had said he saw pumps moving the sewage from the foundations of several plots over an embankment into the ditch, Thomas told jurors.
But in a short speech to jurors before the evidence began, Taylor Wimpey's barrister Ben Williams KC said the man had "got it wrong".
The firm accepted causing the spillage but disputed the allegation it pumped sewage into the ditch or that any flowed into the building works, Williams said.
He said such actions were "contrary to all training and expectations" of Taylor Wimpey or its subcontractors and it "would have made no sense" for anyone at the site to pump the sewage in the way alleged.
When he took to the witness box, the Northumbrian Water worker told jurors he got to the site at about 16:30 BST after being notified of an issue, with the "pollution" he found in the ditch "probably the worst" he had seen in 36 years in the job.
He said he could instantly smell it was sewage and he saw "physical waste" in the slow-flowing watercourse, adding it "had obviously been discharging for a long time" and "diluted sewage water" was "backing up" into the building site.
But when questioned by Thomas about seeing discharge being pumped into the ditch, which was the actual crux of the criminal issue, the man said he had not seen any such activity.
He saw hoses leading over an embankment but during his nearly four and half-hour stay on the site, he did not see them connected to a pump, the court heard.
Thomas asked the man if he "at any point" saw any "pumping activity" into the ditch.
"No," the man replied, prompting the prosecutor to ask for a short break in proceedings.
When court resumed, Thomas said given the man's contradictory statements and his new testimony "under oath" that "no pumping activity took place", it was "clearly not safe to proceed" and no evidence would be offered.
Saying it happened occasionally but not often, Judge Stephen Earl directed jurors to return a formal not guilty verdict.
Taylor Wimpey will be sentenced for the discharging water offence it admitted at a future date.
