Hotel firm handed huge fine for polluting Nottinghamshire river

The owners of Thoresby Hall Hotel in Ollerton have been fined £90,000 and ordered to pay £44,518.96p prosecution costs for discharging partially treated sewage into the River Meden.

Bourne Leisure was hit with the sanction after being convicted at Mansfield Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday (4 March).

Suspicions were raised when an Environment Agency officer spotted a milky cloud of pollution in the river whilst working nearby. The pollution was found to have come from Thoresby Hall Hotel’s sewage treatment works.

The hotel is not connected to the mains sewage system and operates its own sewage treatment plant under the strict control of an environmental permit issued by the Environment Agency. The permit controls the quantity and quality of treated waste water allowed to be discharged into the River Meden.

Investigations showed that permit conditions had been breached numerous times between April 2015 and September 2017.

Yvonne Ratcliffe, environment officer at the Environment Agency, said: “The permit system allows businesses to operate whilst protecting the environment; it is important that permit holders ensure they have robust management systems in place to ensure their compliance. It is not sufficient to wait for the Environment Agency to alert you to a failure to comply with permit conditions. Required procedures and measures are in place for a reason but the limits set on a permit need to be complied with and respected. Anybody who breaches these limits are putting the environment at risk

“An assessment found that the discharge led to a limited water quality impact, but this was seen to be due to low ammonia levels in the river upstream of the discharge and the substantial dilution from the upstream flow.”

The company has also been made to pay a £170 victim surcharge.