Our story begins in Pembrokeshire, to the north of Haverfordwest. To be exact, at Withyhedge landfill site. Which lies to the east of the A40 and just south of the railway line to Fishguard.
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WHERE?
You can see the site for yourselves in the OS map below. Circled towards the top.
I believe the site was originally managed by the county council. Then, 1995 saw a new arrangement involving Resources Management UK Ltd. This company was taken over by SITA UK – now Suez Recycling and Recovery UK – from whence it transferred to the Potter Group of Welshpool, Wales’ biggest recycling company.
In March 2022 Potter sold Resource Management UK to the Dauson Environmental Group Ltd of Cardiff, helped by a loan of £1,143,000 from Walters Land Ltd of Hirwaun. (Though this may have taken the form of writing off a debt incurred in January 2020 by Potter.)
Throughout changes of ownership Resources Management UK Ltd has remained the registered operator of the Withyhedge site. Here’s the Land Registry title document complete with plan. (Which needs to be updated.)
It may be worth mentioning that some three years ago Walters extended the Withyhedge site for the Potter Group. And as the Walters Linkedin page tells us, “As a result of delivering this project, Walters have been awarded a new landfill cell construction project (by Potter) in Telford.”
Walters Land is part of the Walters Group of Hirwaun, which has a history in opencast mining but is now rehabilitating itself with the planet-botherers with wind turbines. Even wind turbines on former opencast sites.
Anyway, that’s the background, so let’s push on.
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WHAT’S NEW?
I’m writing this because people living in the vicinity of the Withyhedge landfill site have had enough of the increasing smells from the site, suspected water pollution, and the traffic problems caused by a constant stream of trucks bringing waste from Cardiff and even from England (via Cardiff).
As if that wasn’t enough, a local farmer has even told me, “This site is why so many of us have gone down with (Bovine) TB in the last ten months! Cleared the woods and disturbed all the (badger) setts.”
Here are some very recent reports of locals complaining and politicians getting involved.
The Pembrokeshire Herald on December 21. Western Telegraph from the day after Boxing Day. And then a statement last week from Natural Resources Wales, which may have resulted from a complaint made by local Senedd Member Paul Davies.
In addition to the noise, the traffic, and the smells, there was also a fire on the site in July, 2018.
The image below shows trucks queuing up to dump their rubbish at Withyhedge. The blue trucks belong to Atlantic Recycling Ltd, part of the Dauson Group which, as we’ve seen, owns the site.
The Dauson Group itself is owned by David John Neal of Rumney, Cardiff. Who runs many companies.
Neal seems to have been in this business for a long time and, perhaps inevitably, has had his brushes with regulatory authorities. Here’s a case from May 2013 involving the sensitive Gwent Levels.
Neal was in court again in November 2017 for having done nothing to clear up the mess he’d made. “Neal was fined £30,000, ordered to pay £20,000 costs, and given an 18 week prison sentence, suspended for 12 months.”
I must confess I hadn’t given landfill much thought lately, I assumed it was being phased out in favour of recycling. Because you don’t have to be an enviro-loony to think that putting thousands of tons of waste into the ground may be a bad idea.
So I was surprised to find so many landfill sites in Wales, and so many operators. Here’s the list provided by the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’. (Updated 16.08.2023.)
One that caught my eye was the site at the old Tir John power station in Swansea, where I had family and friends working. The site is operated by Enovert South Ltd of Stafford. There’s also an Enovert North Ltd, which runs the Hafod landfill in Wrecsam.
Both companies are owned by Enovert Management Ltd, which is in turn owned by Brad Scott Huntington, a Canadian living in the Cayman Islands.
In fact, most companies operating Welsh landfill sites are based over the border. Making me wonder if these sites are used for local waste, or if they’re taking – as at Withyhedge – garbage from England.
It seems obvious that David John Neal would not have been interested in the site unless there was money to be made. Either in the form of an extended lifespan for the site, or an increase in capacity. Maybe both.
And indeed, I’m told that a new 250,000 tonne extension has been issued. It is even suggested that old waste is being dug up to make way for new deliveries, and that this accounts for the recent deterioration in air and water quality in the vicinity.
What’s more, local sources say that last year the site accepted 44,000 tonnes more than its permit allowed.
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CONNECTIONS
Despite the bad odour around landfills, and his record, Corruption Bay – in the form of the Development Bank of Wales (DBW) – has been generous to David John Neal and his many companies.
Despite the damage caused to the Gwent Levels DBW has made three loans since 2020 to Neal Soil Suppliers Ltd, one of the companies named in the court proceedings.
There are other outstanding DBW loans going back to 2013.
As we’ve seen, a name that crops up regularly in connection with David Neal and this saga is Dauson. The Dauson Group owns both the Withyhedge site and the ‘Atlantic’ trucks that deliver there.
I knew I’d seen the Dauson name before, and so I did a bit of digging. Sure enough, I turned it up – on this very blog!
Back in October 2019 I wrote about ambitious plans for the old Ferodo site in Caernarfon. Scroll down to the section ‘Brakes off at the Ferodo site’.
As originally written, this was a complicated story, a number of players. I’ll try to keep this recap simple, but you can read the original piece if you want the fuller picture.
So to cut a long story short . . . after the successor company to Ferodo pulled out, and the plant finally closed, the site passed into the possession of the ‘Welsh Government’. (Here’s the title document.)
In April 2009 there was an agreement between our respected tribunes and Bluefield Caernarfon Ltd, a company formed July 2007. There was also a Bluefield Caernarfon Management Ltd.
Both companies dissolved in January 2016. With Bluefield Caernarfon leaving four outstanding charges.
A familiar name because Bluefield Land Ltd, formed in 2004, is another David John Neal company. With five outstanding charges with the Julian Hodge Bank.
Neal did not figure among the directors of the Bluefield manifestations in Gwynedd. He may have been represented by associates. But he definitely held shares.
The 100 shares for Bluefield Caernarfon were split 35 for Bluefield Land and 65 for Twenty20 Homes Ltd of Bridgend, which also dissolved in January 2016, the same month as the Bluefield Caernarfon companies.
A majority of the shares in Twenty20 Homes was held by Macob Property Holdings Ltd, also of Bridgend. Macob finally went belly-up in January 2020, though an administrator had been appointed as early as March 2014, just 26 months after formation.
We seem to be looking at considerable shuffling around and interplay between companies destined to fail.
One of the Neal ‘associates’ I find particularly interesting is Gary Goodman of Liverpool. Interesting because all the others involved are from south east Wales.
Goodman was a director of both Caernarfon Bluefield companies and the Cardiff company of the same name. But more than that, Goodman was also a director of Bluefield Sandbach Ltd.
And among the other directors of Bluefield Sandbach I saw a name I’d noticed earlier in the research for this piece, Daymion Jenkins. In fact, he seems to have had a Nap hand of Bluefield companies.
His Linkedin page mentions Bluefield but would have us believe he quit in 2009. But as we’ve just seen, according to Companies House he hung on until April 2014. Why the discrepancy?
Bluefield Sandbach also threw up a new name, Howard Wyn Evans of Haynes Watts, accountants of Cardiff. And yet another Bluefield company in Bluefield Energy Ltd. Though I can’t see any connection to David Neal.
Evans has been director of quite a few companies, many in the ‘renewables’ sector. One that caught my eye was Sundorne Products (Llanidloes) Ltd, owned by Potters Waste Management Ltd of Welshpool.
Remember Potters, former owners of the Withyhedge landfill site in Pembrokeshire? Small world, innit!
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CONCLUSION
As I was writing this I kept thinking of the remarkable case of Stan ‘The Pies’ Thomas and the publicly-owned land he was able to buy at knockdown prices.
I wrote about the case early in 2016: Pies, Planes & Property Development, and Pies, Planes & Property Development 2. (I try to be imaginative in naming follow-ups.)
Back then, I and others tended to point the finger at the Regeneration Investment Fund for Wales LLP (RIFW), which had responsibility for disposing of public land for the best possible price. Or so we were led to believe.
Fingers were also pointed at one of the LLP partners, Amber Fund Management, and valuers Lambert Smith Hampton.
Following the Stan Thomas fiasco, RIFW was reorganised, with now just two partners (Amber was given the heave-ho), and has some £50m in the bank. What it actually does nowadays is open to question.
But thinking back, I can’t help wondering if instead of – even in addition to – dodgy dealings there might have been political intervention in favour of Stan Thomas. And perhaps others.
For over the years I’ve come to suspect that certain businessmen, in and around Cardiff, in positions to smooch Labour politicians, get favoured treatment. Maybe ‘pointed’ in certain directions.
This obviously works against those further from Cardiff, and those who would prefer not to get too close to those reptiles.
Looking back, with all we now know, there’s also something of a whiff about the Ferodo deal; the site being gifted by the ‘Welsh government’ to people who couldn’t find Caernarfon on a map – but were already known to Corruption Bay.
And when we learn that the principal in this case, David John Neal, was so generous towards his local Assembly Member you have to fight your rapidly elevating eyebrows.
For God’s sake, three donations, from three different Neal companies, to Vaughan Gething’s 2018 leadership campaign! Was making it look like three separate funders supposed to help Gething?
Will Dai Neal be contributing to Gething’s current leadership campaign? Why not!
As a much-loved sitcom character might have put it – ‘Lubbly jubbly!’
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© Royston Jones 2024
What a great article, and highlight on such behaviours, sadly seeming to become more widespread. You must have put hours into your article with beautiful references which speak for themselves, reminded me of my younger days stopping a big development going ahead, despite a similar playing field as the one you exposed. Great job, all the best and OAP still rebelling against dodgems and those who drive them ????
Have you heard of this group called Voice of Wales [sic]? They seem to be like a Welsh version of the EDL. Claim to be standing up for Wales but display that flag on which we are not represented. Gormless twats.
I have heard of them, they’re based in Swansea. They’re a bit too far right for my tastes and, as you point out, they wave the wrong flag. That said, they do put out some interesting stuff. Sometimes tackling issues that will be ignored by the MS media.
As I’m opposed to the kind of censorship being proposed in Ireland and elsewhere, which will be used to silence critics and political opponents, I believe there must be a place for Voice of Wales. Especially when anti-White racism goes unchecked, anti-Semitism is on the rise, and all manner of lunacies enter the mainstream.
I wonder if there’s any connections between them and the Swansea Loyals. I’m always a bit suspicious when sorts like these take up the cause of combating antisemitism, as Tommy Robinson has done it seems. I get to thinking, do they really consider themselves kindred spirits with the Jewish people, or is it more a case of them seizing upon the fight because those they really don’t like, Muslims and the Left, are the biggest perpetrators of antisemitism, or at least are perceived to be?
I thought they were outright UKIPpers, hence the inappropriate flag.
otherwise they add to the matrix of diversity of opinion. may not agree with what they say etc but as far as what they put out don’t see any advocacy for violence but a concentration with immigration and the dismantling of welsh communities. although they don’t include the english in that.
they seem to be taking some credit for publicising the Home Office fiasco at the Stradey Park Hotel.
must be doing something right as they have attracted the attentions of PC Plod.
I can’t offer any real respect to their opinions I’m afraid when they are so obviously thick as planks. They have it in for Drakeford, from what I can gather in my limited observations, and there are valid reasons to criticise him of course, but a 5 year old could gather that immigration is wholly the responsibility of Westminster and so he has nothing to do with ‘refugees’ being housed in communities against local objection, beyond at most acquiescing to his puppet masters’ bidding.
Flying a flag which denies our very existence as a distinct nation, supporting a union with a faded superpower 18 times our size and the source of the world’s lingua franca, and exhibiting a major blind spot when it comes to settlement in the hundreds of thousands from said same: that’s supposed to be a defence of Welsh culture and interests?
I suppose in their defence, the case can be made that the independence cause does have the perception of being a woke one with some of YC’s antics in recent years. By default those of a conservative bent will lean on unionism in opposition. This is why parties like Gwlad as so important, so as to contribute to a big tent approach to the independence movement.
I think the issue with Drakeford on immigration is that he and his crew have declared Wales to be a Nation of Sanctuary, which is interpreted to mean open borders. Now we can see the results of such policies in Sweden, Germany, the USA and other countries. So while immigration is, as you say, the preserve of the UK government, Drakeford has no right to complain about cases like the Stradey Park Hotel.
The position of Drakeford, Waters and others in relation to that case is comparable to what we see in the USA, in cities like New York and Chicago. Many of the unvetted migrants pouring into Texas, Florida, and other states are shipped north to cities that have declared themselves to be cities of sanctuary – but now they complain about too many seeking ‘sanctuary.
It’s hypocrisy. It’s virtue signalling catching up with you. Whether it’s Chicago or Llanelli.
I was a Councillor at all levels for 41 yrs – Community & Borough & City & County levels – in rural north Swansea.from 1976 to 2017. Fly Tipping and organised commercial tipping was prevalent over those decades. I diligently reported all such incidents – many with clear evidence – even before National Resources Wales NRW came into being. Over 41 years there was only one prosecution – a successful prosecution – by the then Borough Council. I was a crown witness in the Court that day of Crown with Lliw Council versus a Mr Sutton.
I cannot recall any other Councillor of any Political Party in the entire Swansea area ever being a prosecution witness over 41 years!
The main offenders are obviously the illegal tipping operators. There is a lot of money involved in Waste Disposal. The second “‘offenders’ are the ‘Authorities’ themselves who just do not follow up complaints about illegal dumping, whether on a mass level, or simple fly tipping. I frequently felt that my then Councillor Colleagues and local Senedd Members, were just not interested in the environment of rural areas.It all still goes on.
Coincidently, there’s been a surge in ‘unregulated waste’ dumping in England.
This is where an English local authority has a legitimate contract with a processer on non-recycled material who do the shredding. Further downstream this processer then has a contract with a landfill site, however, to minimise the cost of landfill tonnage this material goes into the black market for illegal dumping. Here is an example.
https://www.itv.com/news/meridian/2024-01-10/its-clearly-deliberate-investigation-into-fly-tipping-at-ancient-woodland
The local authority in England can only “see” it’s downstream waste as far as the processor and there have been a number of criminal prosecutions, most notable by a joint operation by West Mercia Police with the Environment Agency in England. This has led to rogue processors dumping in sites as in the example.
The question arises, as to whether the amounts imported from England into sites like Withyhedge landfill (could be others) as a way of legitimising tonnage on the cheap that are already in the underworld unregulated waste market in England. Tonnage laundering. Environment Agency (England) and West Mercia Police. Telford & Wrekin Council is looking at the possibility of using forensic marking sprays.
https://www.college.police.uk/article/reducing-fly-tipping-west-mercia
Needs to be an investigation both by the Welsh Government on what is imported (why?) and also Dyfed Powys Police in evidencing for prosecution of laundered tonnage by police forces in England.
Illegal tipping is a widespread problem. I’ve read about a number of cases in recent years where tipping has taken place with the permission of the landowner. Sometimes that landowner is a farmer, and the defence is, “It’s my land, I can do what I like on it”.
It makes me wonder if there’s a point, for both police and regulatory authorities, when they’ll turn a blind eye to registered sites exceeding the authorised capacity rather that just have it dumped in beauty spots.
Usually, the farmer or landowner is coerced by debt. Starts with a small amount for cash, then the dumpers want to deposit more, so return with the threat they cannot refuse for want of snitching upon the initial quantity. It’s organised crime. A few heavies used for enforcement. This is not the odd mattress, it’s lorry loads of pre-processed shredded material, using dodgy lorries and modern slavery. Even better if they manage to get a legit site to dodge the weighbridge by arm twisting an indebted employee. Can be a legit site operator at one location diverting ‘over-tonnage’ elsewhere to a fly-site. Was a big problem in the northern counties and was cracked by joint operations between Garda and PSNI. Former paramilitaries involved. This trade has moved to England. Forensic marking with DNA spray is used to nail the suspects. Wales an easy target for dumps as environment devolved (NRW more interested in persecuting farmers, victims as well as perps) with lax audits on downstream disposal and policing is not devolved. More difficult stunt to pull if the legit site is run by in-house company like Carmarthenshire (Nantycaws) hence the leapfrog further west. Pembrokeshire does not create that much refuse.
I suppose organised criminality was something I preferred to avoid because there’s no evidence of it in this case. And those I’ve written about could be perpetrators or victims. But it’s always a possibility.
People resident near the Withyhedge landfill complain of ‘putrid smells’. It is very distinctive. Have noticed (by sight and smell) big articulated tipper trucks descend off the A48 at Pensarn roundabout and continue west along the A40 to Pembrokeshire. Skull and spinal material. As I understand it, such material should be incinerated and not dumped due to risk of BSE prion protein contamination. NRW should launch an investigation.
How do you know it’s skull and spinal material?
The rest can be processed into other uses, everything from arable fertiliser to glue and if not can be donated free to anaerobic digestion plants which are all licensed to accept such material. All such sites are in the central valleys or Cardiff with one in Llangadog between Llandeilo and Llandovery. The trucks are going the wrong way. Other remnant doesn’t usually find it’s way into the waste stream, and not at such a scale. It’s only the skull and spinal remnant is specifically designated for incineration. Should never go to landfill.
Prions cause all sorts of damage to living systems by causing proteins to fold in unnatural ways – a bit like Globalists/lobbyists and WokeWG!
So we have Playground Wales, Eco-friendly Wales, and Garbage Dump Wales – how delicious would it be if all three collided in the manner of this Simpsons clip from back when it was the best thing on TV:
I remember my dad saying they had to cover up the Ferodo sign to avoid free advertising, when Ponce Carlo caught the train to Caernarfon way back when and hopped off for a wave at the cameras there. Do you know they shut that line no doubt without an iota of regard for the communities it served, but reopened it briefly for him to come in and lord it? I think everything wrong with this cesspool of a state we’re trapped in is neatly encapsulated in that sentence.
There’s no question that rubbish is being brought in from England, the only question is – how much? However much it is, the rubbish itself, and the long journeys involved, seriously damage the ‘Welsh Government’s environmental credentials.
Probably, either due to a sense of colonial arrogance, or as a reflection of lower land values (ultimately of course a function of said colonialism), it is ‘preferable’ to dump it in Wales. It’s also a neat metaphor for the social dumping of undesirables inflicted on us! Officially, all for the collective benefit of Our Kingdom, you understand.
I suspect it’s people close to politicians who act this way, politicians of all colours
The Blessed Welsh Govt is supposed to, in the articles of devolution, publish MONTHLY!!!! everything they spend over 25K. but since Drakeford came to power this has been not the case…..what are they trying to hide…and of course what Jac o the North needs to do is delve into the Development Bank of Wales or whatever its called because a lot is sneaked through that so we the stupid public dont see it…its all corruption and friends of friends…its the nature of politics always will be and shall be…amen..lol…its in ods doc format…used to be xls…easy…how to make it more difficult…you can use apache as a free software app to open it and then save to xls…
https://www.gov.wales/welsh-government-expenditure-over-25k-2023
I think those figure you talk about are always a few months in arrears.
Just checked the link you provided Liz and the following message was displayed.
“If you need a more accessible version of this document please email digital@gov.wales. Please tell us the format you need. If you use assistive technology please tell us what this is.”
Presumably, if we request the information in a different format they will provide.
I wouldn’t doubt that. But I might call a difference between Dai Jones getting help from his MP or MS to dump local waste in the old quarry and some chancer using political pull to act as a middleman for waste from England.