Wasteland: the rubbish gangs

Hello, it's Aida and your listening to the slow newscast from the observer.

This week, the hunt for the rubbish gangs. The problem of illegal dumping sites in this country is a growing one. But it's the source of crime that often flies under the radar. It lacks the peril of a heist, the morbid passion of a murder case, or the international intrigue of a drug smuggling network.

But it may also be in part because it appears to be so easy to get away with. In charging, convicting, and trying to compel criminal gangs to clean up after themselves, the state has revealed itself to be a bit of a soft touch. Many of the people responsible seem to have made the calculation that the risks are worth the potentially very lucrative rewards.

It tells us something about how our laws and justice system think about the balance between harm caused and punishment received, and what kind of harms it considers to be the most egregious.

“How can we think about how to punish humans when the victim is not a person?”

How do we negotiate a just outcome when the harm caused is to the environment? Something more abstract that we can't project pity onto, but that we must nevertheless protect. This week, my colleagues Jeeven Vasagar and Jonathan Lewis explore the wasteland, and try and figure out why it's been so hard to stop the UK's rubbish gangs over to Jeeven.

A quiet road in rural Lincolnshire. It's a pretty slice of English countryside. I'm with my producer, Jonathan. That's hard to see, right? You can't see much.

Does it matter? Durish? Oh, I mean. It's a good view of it there, actually.

“On one side of Fen Lane, there are fields of potatoes and sugarbee”

stretching towards the horizon. On the other, there's a hedge road. The afternoon is warm, and the road is empty. It's the sort of place we need to expect very little to happen. As we try to find a vantage point to see behind the hedge,

a Lori turns onto the road and starts rumbling towards us.

At first, we pay little attention to it.

But as the Lori gets closer, it slows down. It passes us and then stops. The reversing lights come on and the Lori backs towards us. The driver rolls down the window, and above the rumbling of the engine, you can hear him say, "What are you doing?"

The question sounds simple enough, but there's something about the way he asks it. He isn't curious. He's suspicious. We're here because just beyond the hedge road, there's a mountain of rubbish. The remains of one of Britain's largest illegal waste dumps. This is a story of modern Britain.

Of gaps in law enforcement, that eventually grew so big, you could drive a whole column of Lori's through them. And it's about money. A lot of money.

“I think if he's got the balls to do it and got it properly,”

you can learn some serious serious money at it. The people who ran this site just didn't care. They took no measures to protect the people who lived around here, or the environment. They just dumped thousands of tons of waste in a field.

And they made more than half a million pounds in less than a year.

It turns out this is one of the easiest crimes to commit. It's possible to get away with it for years, and it's happening up and down the country. It's getting bigger and bolder. It's linked to gangs running guns and drugs. There are now at least 700 illegal waste dumps around the UK.

Fen Lane. This isn't just a flight tip. At its peak, it was the size of five football pitches. Are you one of the neighbors? Do you want to be about the sight here? Okay, thanks very much.

Eventually, the Laurie driver heads off, insisting he knows nothing about the site. Two miles out of the ledge. But as the Laurie makes its way to the site's entrance, it stops. He's gone in here. The Laurie turns through the gate and vanishes into the site.

So Jonathan and I start walking.

And towards the second locked gate, the seals off the dumping ground.

There's an industrial unit on the site. And we knock the door of what looks like an office. He's inside the truck.

“I don't think those bells work, I think.”

We wait and still there's nothing. The site is silent, but for the low humming of an engine. So we make our way back out to our car to wait. Then, another vehicle arrives. An SUV pulls up beside us.

And before I can introduce myself, the man behind the wheel is already shouting. Hello. Hi. Hi. I'm Stephen.

Sorry to be speaking earlier.

I'm an engineer at the observer. We're making a podcast about the way something. We're making a podcast about the way something. We just want to kind of see if you're hot or you're in. The conversation deteriorates rapidly.

And the man gets out of the vehicle.

“He starts filming us on his phone and his voice gets louder.”

More aggressive. What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? All of this is strange, because the authorities have dealt with Fen Lane.

The police and environment agency raided the dump six years ago. The gang behind the dumping and the landowners have all been taken to court. But it's still a mess. And there's still something fishy going on here. Sorry to be begging you.

What are you doing? What are you doing? Sorry to be begging you. I've been a child. What are you doing with this face?

What the fuck up? What the fuck up? Take that. No comment. Okay.

Didn't you notice that's name? No. That wasn't there. It's back, anyway. No.

Jonathan and I returned to our car.

“And as we drive off, the man starts throwing rocks at us.”

Sorry. Just two rockers. We want to find out why. After years of neighbours raising the alarm. A raid by police and environmental investigators.

A string of criminal convictions. There's still something here that people don't want outsiders to see. And beyond Van Lane. How and why. Quite corners of the English countryside have become a wasteland.

A hundred meters beyond the entrance to the illegal wasteland. We turn off Van Lane and onto a gravel driveway. Peter night is waiting for us. His family have found this land for generations. His parents live in the house next door.

And his brother lives on the other side. Peter night is friendine understated. He's the sort of man who isn't particularly interested in talking about himself. Although at one point, he does tell us he won a prize alongside his son. For growing sugarbee last year.

The pride is obvious. Not boastful. And then he points across the trees over the road and towards the site. The illegal dump sits directly beside his fields. For almost a decade now, it's been a blossom landscape.

We sit at the dining room table and armed with a thick folder of letters, photographs, complaints and records of meetings. Peter night begins. It started in about 2017 in the autumn.

Peter night tells us that when the operation first started, it didn't look especially remarkable.

There was waste coming on to the site. Well, initially in 2017, it was on a smaller scale. A pallet shredding, that sort of thing on a small area of land. Well, when a so small area, probably at eight. By 2018, the company operating there was called Sammy Recycling.

Who claimed they were making a question for the products, which was, no doubt, a fictitious company. It was just a way of dumping further waste. The operation attracted complaints and investigations followed. Eventually, in 2019, the company was fined a thousand pounds for operating in a legal waste site. But that was just the beginning.

Peter night flips through his folder. Yeah. I mean, we would have sent emails to the council and the environmental agency,

The environment agency responsible for investigating environmental crime in England.

“Peter night says he contacted them repeatedly, and not just them.”

We felt let down by the authorities. The police, the fire brigade, the environmental agency, the council. We just felt we had been at pass from pellet post. And nobody was going to do anything about it, until an officer from the Environment Agency did seemingly take it more seriously.

And assured us, that this was going to be dealt with. The frustration sounds fresh, even though he's describing events from years ago. You get the sense he's replayed these conversations hundreds of times in his head. Meanwhile, next door, the site kept growing. Eventually, Peter night reaches for a photograph that makes a stop.

The image shows us what the operation had become. The original dumping area had expanded far beyond its starting point.

Yeah, the initial site for a hard standing and another 4 acres of what was grass paddocks

that they literally started burning waste and buried it on. So, yeah, I'd say approximately 8 acres. 8 acres doesn't mean much until you put it into context. It's roughly the space occupied by 60 semi detached houses. According to Peter night, lorries were arriving constantly.

The problem would be, up to 10 lorries a day, I would say, could have been more, could have been less. But, like I say, we weren't sat there watching the gate. We'd only see what was noticeable in pass it. I mean, it was a heap of waste, probably 30 foot high.

I don't know how big Wembley Stadium is, but it was quite big. So, it was football stadium size, it was huge. This wasn't a random flight yet, but it wasn't somebody dumping a vanload of rubbish in a field. This was an industrial operation. Someone had secured the land, someone had organised machinery,

someone had found customers and somebody somewhere was making a lot of money. Then, Peter night turns another page to show us what happened in September 2021. The entire site was a blaze, flames tower above the waste mound.

“I think black column of smoke rises into the sky.”

The plume stretches across the countryside, across Peter night's farm. So, depending on the wind direction, there was smoke sort of heavy smoke, not sort of smoke from a hot fire. It was sort of smoke from a smoldering wet damp fire and sort of in the winter period, that sort of smoke hangs fairly low like a fog.

And you can tell it, it wasn't just wood. It was all sorts of things. I couldn't quite say what it was, but it wasn't just clean wood being burnt. You can almost taste this. What would only be described as toxic smoke.

At this point, Peter night's neighbor, Mick Potter's joins us. He's a local builder. He remembers the fire, too. Oh, the smoke, the accurate smoke. I mean, neighbor, Paul, he bought an air tester.

And it was really a very, very high levels of toxicity,

and basically evacuate the area.

I think we'll have the fires there. Our often was at fires. Yes. Oh, 24/7. Yeah, it's the biggest fire, obviously.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a bit scary because it's a wind change direction. It could have took us all out. Took us all out. We all got a lot of the gun.

The fire had been started deliberately. It burned for 40 days. Listening to Peter night and Mick Potter's. It's hard not to think about the contrast, between the fields of prize-winning crops outside.

And the photographs of fires, toxic smoke, and folders with years of unanswered complaints on the dining room table. I've seen surveillance footage gathered by the environment agency of some of those fires.

In one video, an inferno of burning rubbish lights up the night sky. In another, a column of grey brown smoke bidders from the waste dump. Over the course of our conversation,

the names of those involved in the dump emerge. You look pretty, you look pretty tough, yourself, though. [laughter]

“But did you feel worried? Did you feel scared about it?”

Well, I have to be a bit careful because I'm a shotgunster if could hold us. So, one has to be very, very careful what one does. [laughter] You thought you didn't want to intervene.

You didn't want to. I did approach two at one point about the smoke and the fires.

And then they've armed. So, yeah. So, did you know the owner of the land? Dave Bagley. Yeah.

Did you ever speak to him about it? Oh, I rang him. What did he say?

“I'm not saying doing me, it's my part of the Mark Greenfield.”

The names of the men connect to the land

are the first pieces of a much bigger puzzle

and to understand that puzzle. I've spent months talking to waste industry inside us. One former waste industry employee agreed to speak to us on condition of anonymity. We'll call her Grace.

For years, she helped companies move waste around the country. She also, for a period, unknowingly, she says, supplied waste to Fen Lane. It was an utter shock and I've been doing this for 16 years. I had the wool pulled over my eyes massively.

When rubbish leaves our homes and businesses, it's taken to waste transfer stations where it's sorted. There might be one section for hazardous waste, other food chippings, another for recyclable waste,

and another for waste that can be turned into fuel.

“Grace's job was to source rubbish from waste transfer stations,”

and arrange for the material to be moved around the country. On wittingly, Grace says, she gave the gang who turned Fen Lane into a wasteland, access to the rubbish they wanted. I was given a legitimate facility, a legitimate permit,

a legitimate waste carrier's license, everything. This is why it takes all the boxes. Each movement is supposed to be recorded on a waste transfer note, as document like an invoice that describes the type of waste, how much there is, who's handling it, and where it's meant to go next.

In theory, this paperwork makes waste traceable, but in practice, this is where the scambigans. The permit number had changed by one digit. For example, it could look like a four and it was a two or a one, and it looked like a seven.

The notes said the waste was headed to a legitimate disposal site, where instead, it was headed towards Fen Lane.

“They were collecting material from A, saying it was going to be,”

and actually delivering it to Z. But then, they would provide documentation that it had been tipped at B. That's the scamb. In this convoluted analogue system, the paperwork pointed one way, and the waste went another.

The gang got paid to take the waste away, but instead of properly disposing of it, they dumped it and Fen Lane. You see, getting rid of waste properly cost money. At the time this was happening, the cost of obtaining a permit for a landfill site was more than £20,

there are annual recurring permit costs after that, and that's just the beginning. On a landfill site, waste is supposed to be buried. Water has to be kept away from the piles of rubbish. Incinerators have to remove harmful particles before smokers discharged.

The cost of all of this, at a cost of hiring staff who know what they're doing, can run into hundreds of thousands of pounds. Investigators estimate that the Fen Lane gang

avoided £1.2 million in legitimate disposal costs.

Whereas my understanding moving through this, is that there are a lot more people involved than what was thought. Everybody was getting paid down the line. The trouble at Fen Lane started more than a decade ago. In 2015, when the land, then a grass-covered field,

was bought by two men, Mark Greenfield and James Bagley. A acquaintances I've spoken to described men who enjoyed flashy live styles. There were shooting trips, holidays overseas to watch Tyson Fury. James Bagley drove a white land rover discovery with personalized number plates. He was a parish counselor in the local area, an elected official who was meant to look after the interest of residents.

Over the years, the land was occupied by a succession of companies that dumped illegal waste. In October 2019, Peter Knight and other neighbors received a letter with Mark Greenfield and James Bagley's names on it. You will be delighted to hear that the clearing of our site on Fen Lane has commenced. We have built a temporary bank around our site for your benefit to obscure the ice ore.

But the letter was a deception. Fen Lane was not about to be cleaned up. The bank wasn't being built for the neighbor's benefit. It was built to conceal a crime. It was all about to get much worse.

By late 2019, HGVs were trundling down the narrow country lane, past the wheat fields and turning left onto the Fen Lane site. On site, there was heavy machinery including two diggers at a skip. Fire started bigger than before. Behind its ramparts of Earth, the grass covered field had become a wasteland.

As Britain went into pandemic lockdown, activity on the site accelerated, there was a network of people playing different roles,

but an entire shadow industry.

And one name stands out. Paul Canner.

“He's the prime mover and all of this, according to court documents.”

He's the one who siphoned the waste shipments out of the legal system, who had the industry contacts and brought in people to run Fen Lane. Who is he? John Hurner, I set out to look for him. We gather the list of names, the gang he employed.

If Canner was the king of waste crime, we'd start with the pawns. We got back in the car and knocked on doors. Hi there, what about you? We should have got Paul Canner. My name's Stephen, I'm an editor of the Observer, it's my colleague, John.

We rang around. Phone calls went unanswered. Voice bells weren't returned. The closer we get to the people,

the center of the operation, the quieter things become.

Until we drive down a dirt track in Warwickshire. There's a couple of German shipments sprouting around, and a big barn full of farm machinery. Peter Wayne writes lives here. He's in his early 30s now, a stocky man with a young child.

He works in construction. But when Canner's gang was dumping on Fen Lane, he lived there in a caravan, just meters from the fires. If anyone can tell us who Canner was, it's him. When we meet Peter Wayne, he's just finished work.

His hands are filthy and he's tired. His fiddling nervously with a vape. An unlike almost everyone else we've tried, he's willing to answer questions. The UK was going into lockdown, work had dried up, and Peter Wayne had an excavator that was sitting idle.

He was just a tyre rail, he was a bit on the asker, I've got 40 grand invested in the machine. Yeah, sitting idle, and then he wanted to say, Yeah, seeing how money bounced. Poor Canner offered him a job.

He'd get paid 150 pounds a day for his work, and a hundred pounds for the machine rental. It was work he could do on his own, and for Peter Wayne, right, that seemed ideal. We was going to a site, I need just come to the site,

I need a machine, there's a bit of time we've got to do, there's a load of buttons around the bank, or on battery, or level it until they look neat inside in the field. Yeah. So I got there, we did that.

Nothing about that, sounds unusual.

Basically, we've ridden you in there, it was an old waste yard.

Peter Wayne, right, says he spent the first month reshaping the embankments around the site. Then the work changed.

“And then obviously, so right, if you want to stay,”

so we're going to start moving some stuff out, we're going to start moving stuff in. I said, yeah, no problem. I said, 'cause all the lives of a machine stunt did so. I'll just get it, I'll just crack 'til. Peter Wayne, right, says he believed the operation was legitimate.

You had no news to ask any questions about that. I know, I'll just talk that word for it, not any. Over the following months, Peter Wayne, right, effectively moved onto the site. He lived in a caravan in the Hélish landscape of the legal waste dump. He worked each day on his excavator.

I mean, we went on there, I think it went on for about... It's a four months, I think. So he thought it was a four months, sir. I thought it was a four months, so I meant like that one too. So I don't know if it's just stuff was coming in, stuff was going out.

The operation looked organized and structured. It looked professional. It also looked strikingly ordinary. Nothing secretive or only threats or dramatic conspiracy. Just a man offering another man work.

He was a good friend and just a bit so. Yeah. And that's where Paul Kanna enters the story. Not as a shadowy figure, but as somebody people trusted. Peter Wayne Wright doesn't hesitate when I ask what Paul Kanna was like.

Did he give you directions? Well, it's very good, it's very good. Peter Wayne Wright pauses. He's fucking very good liar, it is very, very good at what it does. Over the months, Peter Wayne Wright worked to Fen Lane.

Paul Kanna was a constant presence. How often was Paul Kanna on the site, did he come and... He was there most days, yeah? Just a club, show his face, go away. Paul Kanna's son, Josh Kanna was there too.

Giving instructions and checking operations. It was a family business. Are you a girl if that we're in one of them? I get a little bit of this sort of news to come up. Peter Wayne Wright says he gradually became friendly with them.

So he's Josh, he was just another one, he's struggling along with me. Like, you know, he was my friend and whatever, and then he's...

“They were all along what we was doing, you know what I mean?”

Yeah. And it's all come out in the wash. He says the betrayal still hurts. Because he says Paul Kanna knew exactly what he was doing. So Josh did him really, didn't he?

Yeah. If I knew that, and what I know now, they got nowhere near. Yeah. I like to say now, someone not said to me now, but like now.

what questions would you have been asking? I wanted to know where it's coming from. I'd want to see paper work. Yeah. And I want to make sure that where we was working,

and if we were doing a, even putting my bucket near the stuff on the machine, I need to know that they're legally able to do it, where they're doing it. Yeah. Earlier, Grace told us she felt she had the wool pulled over her eyes. Peter uses the same language.

Yeah. It's pulled up all over a lot of people's eyes. By this point, Fen Lane was becoming a busy operation.

“3, 3, 4. Yeah, but for all those, I think it's coming in.”

Yeah. Waste came in, and it looked relatively organised and legitimate, at least from the outside. And then one morning, everything stopped. On a spring day in 2020, police and the environment agency raided the site.

Peter Wainwright was in his digger when the officers moved in. Could you describe the rate? Yeah, they're right over. That's not the kind of place of, obviously, it's big machine running. They've got all around the machine, so I'm like, "What are you all fucking doing?"

Like, "Get out of the way, put the bucket down, open the door." So what, what's the point? I need to get out and do a rest. So what for? What for?

The sort of, they did the time at the time. The rest of the time at the station. Investigators found waste buried up to three meters beneath the site.

“In the cab of a lorry, they rolled back the carpet and found a folder, labelled canner, work.”

In the folder, they were waste transfer notes, the documents that go with any legitimate movement of rubbish, but were faked in this case. On a lorry driver's phone, they found text messages from Josh Canner, Paul Canner's son, directing the delivery of waste to Fen Lane. And they traced payments to Judith Canner, Paul Canner's wife.

More than half a million pounds was paid into her account over the course of six months. The gang was taken to court. Judith and Josh Canner both pleaded guilty to knowingly causing the deposit of waste, and were sentenced to 16 months in prison. Paul Canner pleaded guilty to the same crime,

and knowingly causing the operation of the illegal waste site. He got 26 months in prison. We contacted Judith Canner, who declined to comment. Paul Canner did not respond to her request for comment. We approached Josh Canner, who declined to speak about the case.

Peter Wainwright pleaded guilty to disposing of waste at the site, and would go to prison for six months.

I've never got up a way to do anything illegal, you're not to be it.

He said, you know what, I mean, it just... I've sit down and see what the fuck I'm doing. Peter Wainwright went to prison. Paul Canner went to prison. His wife went to prison, so did his son.

Drivers were convicted, waste brokers were convicted, and the environment agency did, they say, eventually shut down the site. By any normal measure, the story should end there. The gang had been caught in the dump exposed. But almost two years on from the conviction.

Jonathan and I are standing on Fenlan being shouted at by strangers. The truck driver is demanding to know what we're doing. And a man is throwing rocks at our car. Behind the hedge road, the waste is still there. Why wasn't it cleaned up?

“To answer that, you have to look at the men who owned the land.”

One of them is James Bagley. He comes from a local farming family, and lives in a large, gated house, which has a porch held aloft by elegant pillars.

He's the sort of person who, at first glance, anyway,

doesn't look like he belongs anywhere near a giant illegal waste dump. We tracked him down, found his phone number. Hello, yeah, my name's Jeevan. I'm an enter at the Observer. I'm trying to touch with James Bagley.

James, hi, I'm writing an article about the waste dump at Longbendington. I just want to chat to some of the people involved. Please don't be able to sort of have been caught up in this, really. Just sort of find out a bit more about what the impact has been on you. And, you know, how, you know, what's happening to you now, really?

Yeah, a bit to learn. I'll just find a phone number, a bit to learn. It's so nice to meet you another time. Yes, of course. So, what's a good time to give you a call back?

He never picked up again.

About five. So, we went to his house. He answered the intercom. Hello, oh, great, James. It's Jeevan at the Observer.

We spoke on a phone last week. And, yes, I'm not interested in that. Oh, I just want to ask you a few questions about what happened at Penn Lane.

And permitting the operation of the legal waste site.

He didn't respond to our request for comment. Then there's Mark Greenfield. According to court documents, he was the more hands-on of the two. On site nearly every day. He dealt directly with Paul Canner.

And when environment agency officials came by to ask questions, he was the one who responded. Greenfield pleaded guilty to knowingly permitting the operation of an unauthorized waste site. Well, I don't say, James, he did know what was doing on. But I don't think he had much choice because he's part of Mark.

“I think he was just going ahead with it really.”

I think James was a bit like, that's enough now.

You know what I mean, but I don't know. Like I said at the time, I didn't. Oh, I was just a monkey working there with the machine. In December 2024, the landowners were sentenced and nottingham crown court. The judge's conclusion was simple, damning.

Mark Greenfield knew exactly what was happening. So we rang him too. Oh, hi, could I speak to Mark Greenfield, please? Agent. Mark, hi. My name's Jeevan. I'm an editor at the Observer.

I'm just working on a podcast about the waste dumping that happened at Longbendington. Just wondering if I could chat to you about it. Just wondering what happened and how it all came about, ready? We reached out to him. But he refused to comment.

“Officers from the Environment Agency visited the site many times.”

In October 2019, in November 2019, in January 2020, again and again, more visits, more warnings. And through all of this, Mark Greenfield claimed nothing was coming onto the site and nothing unusual was happening there. From the dates on newspapers and letters in the waste, investigators worked out the waste kept coming, long after Mark Greenfield said it had stopped.

The rubbish was contradicting his story, and so was the financial paper trail. Between the 27th of March 2020 and the 24th of April 2020, Greenfield received 5,000 pounds from the account controlled by Judith Canner in roughly weekly payments of 1,000 pounds. James Bagley took a different approach, when neighbours found him to complain about the fires. He said he knew nothing about them.

Mick Pots said he rang James Bagley when Smoke was pouring across the countryside. James Bagley said he knew nothing about it. And in any case, the city left those matters to Mark Greenfield. But surveillance footage from investigators told a different story. James Bagley's white land rover kept appearing around the site in the footage and in witness statements.

The prosecution said James Bagley was on the site on April 3, 2020, while Smoke was rising behind him. He was pictured there again on April 5th, and on April 23rd. He was standing next to Peter Wayne Wright, the digger operator, beside the burning waste, and next to a lorry there was about to dump another load of rubbish.

And knocking him crowned court, the judge told Mark Greenfield and James Bagley. "You lied to the environment agency throughout. You lied to local residents and perhaps most devastatingly. You fought them off and famed ignorance." And yet, in December 2024, the men were given suspended sentences.

Each got 20 months suspended for 18 months. It came with one stipulation. They had to clean up the site by September 2025,

at an estimated cost of £2.5 million.

Except, when we went to Fan Lane just a few weeks ago, the waste was still there. So, what exactly is going on? "This is just past 10 o'clock on the 29th of May. I'm just outside the Nottingham Clown court." In May this year, Mark Greenfield and James Bagley were called back into court.

It's dealing with the aftermath, forcing them to clean up the mess, punishing them for missing the deadline, and stripping away any profits they might have made. The environment agency's barrister argued that the two men had failed to comply with the order that it kept them out of prison.

There were still mounds of waste lying on the site.

“Remember that this started nearly a decade ago.”

This mess should have been cleaned up, but instead, it's been allowed to fester. The environment agency's lawyer asked for waste transfer notes, documents to prove that the waste had been cleared from Fan Lane legally, since the sentencing. According to the environment agency, 87 loads of waste had been removed from the site, around 2,000 tons.

This had lawyers were arriving at night, and wondered why that will be the case.

“The man who threw a rocket us clearly didn't want anyone to poke their nose into what was going on.”

The lawyer that passed us on the lane had some branding on its side. The trailer was navy blue with the logo of a hygiene company. We rang the company, it told us it had stopped using branded lorries two years ago and said it would investigate who the vehicle was sold to, and whether it was operating in the area. There are other businesses operating from the Fan Lane site too,

which aren't involved in the legal waste business.

One is a renewable energy company, where a friend of James Bagley and Mark Greenfields is director.

“According to a Facebook post, he joined them on a boxing trip to see Tyson Fury.”

When we spoke to him, he told us that contrary to what you might expect, his staff, who worked in the office of his energy company, actually quite likely a legal dump. He said they enjoyed the activity. He then hung up and didn't answer our call again. The owner of a local garage told us he believed cars were being sold from the site via eBay,

because buyers had been turning up at his business looking for them. When we visited the site, there were numerous SUVs sitting in the driveway, all in various stages of disrepair.

“The closer you look into the events at Fan Lane, the murkier it gets.”

The story of Fan Lane is echoed across the country. According to estimates from the legal waste industry, about a fifth of all the rubbish produced in this country is now being dumped in illegal sites. As in Fan Lane, it often starts small, and then, as criminals grasp what they can get away with, and what they can earn, waste arrives in lorry loads. The head of the environment agency, Philip Duffy, admitted this year that the likely herd of being caught, the speed it takes to go through the criminal justice system, and the severity of penalties are all stacked in criminal's favor.

The system is too slow, too weak, and too uncertain. Emma Viner is a deputy director of the environment agency. She says the EA is closing down illegal sites all the time, but new ones keep popping up. The scale that we're seeing at the moment, it's obviously it has been growing, and we've seen more organised crime infiltrate the waste industry over probably the last 10 to 15 years.

And organised criminals can be highly sophisticated. It's not opportunists, it's people that have got effectively a business model behind their criminality. They've got people with certain skills, certain roles within that network. And with that, obviously, they are trying tactics and employing tactics to make it harder to detect. So, also, we can't be everywhere all the time.

More than a dozen people were convicted over the dumping in Fenland, but no one got the maximum penalty of five years behind bars. There are still vast mounds of waste there. The EA estimates about 10,000 tons, although the landowners dispute this figure.

One source familiar with the investigation told us, if a criminal has cleared half a million pounds, and they're doing nine to twelve months in prison,

they may see that as a reasonable cost of doing business. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Slow Newscast from the Observer. This episode was written and reported by me, Jeeven Vasagher, and Jonathan Lewis, who was also the producer. Outwork by Lucy Stevenson, sand design was by Dominic DeLaggi. The editor was just a corporate.