Boss of collapsed waste firm HES claims Government 'cover-up’

The waste plant’s former workers have not been paid for December and some are reported to have resorted to food banks.

Neil Gray, SNP MP for Airdrie and Shotts, told the Sunday National that he hopes to meet Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd tomorrow to discuss the workers’ rights.

He has also previously written to Cabinet Minister David Lidington asking him to do all he could to save the jobs and investigate allegations regarding the Cabinet Office conspiring against HES.

Gray and Alex Neil, MSP for Airdrie and Shotts, have been working for the last four months in an attempt to persuade the Government and its agencies to allow time to save the business.

Gray said: “It is a shame that the Environment Agency and the UK Government were not willing to do more to save the business and jobs when Alex and I were doing all we could to get to a compromise position that would allow HES back into regulatory alignment and keep the jobs,” he said.

He believes the UK Government and its agencies have questions to answer about their involvement. “There did not appear to be much willingness for that flexibility and now we are in a situation where the workers are in a terrible situation through no fault of their own,” he said.

“They are in a situation of limbo because they are not able to access their wages for December or the significant amount of overtime that they are due along with their redundancy money.”

However, he added: “It seems clear that this situation could have been avoided, but actions at a UK Government level have made it unavoidable.”

All 400 staff employed by HES in the UK were left unpaid after the firm ceased trading but the Insolvency Service has now confirmed they can apply for redundancy even though HES has not yet declared insolvency.

There are more than 140 HES workers in Scotland who are owed their December wages, including overtime. They have now been told they can claim redundancy money.

HES lost its contracts with 17 NHS trusts in England and NHS Scotland last year after it was found to have breached its permit levels for storing clinical waste.

At the time it was claimed body parts were piling up at its Yorkshire site – an allegation described as “nonsense” by company boss Garry Pettigrew.

READ MORE: HES makes staff redundant and ceases operations after waste scandal

Pettigrew, pictured above, insists he is still fighting to save the company and claims the UK Government is keeping would-be buyers away from the business, telling them to wait until it went under.

“I owe it to everyone to make sure this business survives and believe it or not I’m still fighting for the workers,” Pettigrew said. “I’m still fighting for this business and I will do that to the very end until there’s no breath left in me.

“But it’s not a case of me giving in to the Government to suit their needs. This is a business that has been a success story – a multi-award-winning business for 23 years up until October 5, 2018, when the UK Government decided that they wanted us gone.”

In an interview with the Sunday National conducted before the company collapsed, Pettigrew said it was a case of the UK Government meddling in a business with Scottish headquarters.

“The UK Government has been out to get us,” he said.

Workers at HES headquarters in Shotts, however, dispute a suggestion that Pettigrew did not have the cash to pay them. They say that the company had money in the bank but that Pettigrew chose not to pay them.

But in the interview with the Sunday National, Pettigrew was keen to portray the company as victims of the UK Government.

He maintained that as far back as 2015, he had alerted the UK Government to problems with the country’s waste disposal facilities.

“It’s the biggest Government cover-up that I have ever seen in my life,” he said. “We have been advising since 2015 that the UK had a shortfall [in waste disposal facilities]. In 2018 alone there was a 62% drop in incineration capacity because the ones that are out there are 40-years-old.”

Pettigrew says he told the Environmental Agency last January that the company was on the verge of breaching its storage permit because no waste was moving.

“Rather than wait until we breached our limit we asked if we could change our permit to store 150 tonnes rather than 70 tonnes but they said ‘no’ and said they would see how we were getting on in March.

“In March, we told them it was not getting much better but the Environmental Agency said we needed to either breach our permits or stop collecting from the NHS ... but if we did that then the NHS would be in a mess. They said that wasn’t their problem.

“They scheduled another meeting in June. They did not seem that bothered yet we were still taking in waste and still in breach of our permit although we were still storing it safely.

“We got to June and everywhere across the UK was creaking at the edges. We were sending the Environmental Agency weekly updates telling them that there was no room at the incinerators.”

In September, Pettigrew says he was called to London where he crossed swords with Government officials who told him to get rid of the waste within seven days.

“I told them there was no capacity anywhere to take it and said I could not do it. They said I was there to do what I was told.

“They wanted me to pay £1.4 million on unlicensed sites for waste that I had only been paid £300,000 to pick up so I refused.

“The meeting ended with them threatening me and telling me Theresa May would know my name by the end of the day.’’

Pettigrew then claimed his competitors were given concessions to burn hazardous waste through municipal incinerators.

“That would never have been allowed before and it’s not allowed in Scotland although emissions from a municipal incinerator in England can still travel to Scotland,” he said.

“They’re also storing and transporting waste using unlicensed general hauliers that are transporting consumer goods including food in the same vehicles that are transporting hazardous waste.”

The sites HES dealt with in England to process its waste also suddenly increased their charges, putting further pressure on the company.

“We have used these sites for 20 years and normally there is an annual increase,” said Pettigrew. “We went from an average price of £420 a tonne to £1000 a tonne.”

He claims that hazardous waste is still sitting at the hospitals since he stopped servicing them.

“Needles and toxic drugs are sitting in shipping containers at 17 trusts, and sites are way over their limits. There is nowhere for this to go – that is the whole point.

“I want the truth rather than the nonsense that has been put out there.’’

The Sunday National tried to substantiate Pettigrew’s claims that needles and toxic drugs were sitting in shipping containers but was unable to do so.

Pettigrew said that instead of trying to solve the problem, the UK Government and its agencies were trying to put him out of business, at the cost of potentially losing the only UK hazardous waste facility built in the last 40 years by a British company.

“All our customers were happy with the service – the only thing that was wrong was that we were in excess of our permit but there was no interference with the service on any sites and no point where the waste was not secure,” he said. ‘‘I want an investigation into this and the whole sorry mess.”

READ MORE: Government slammed for 'consciously failing' vulnerable refugees

Gray and Neil are also keen that such an investigation takes place.

Gray, pictured above, said: “He [Pettigrew] has held his hand up to admit he breached his permit limits in storing waste but unfortunately there does not seem to have been a determination to get that dealt with in a way that was flexible and allowed some compromise.

“It is time UK ministers took some responsibility and also agreed to an independent inquiry into their handling of this whole affair.”

Neil agreed there should be an independent inquiry into the UK Government’s role in the collapse of the business.

“This will be an incredibly difficult time for the HES workers and their families and we are here to do what we can to help if we can.

“But I am clear that the UK Government has a responsibility to now start working in the interests of the staff, not against them.

He added:”It also needs to provide an explain for it actions, which appear to have driven this business to the wall.”

An Environment Agency spokesperson commented: “Healthcare Environmental Services has significantly and repeatedly breached its environmental permits by storing

excess waste inappropriately at a number of its sites.

“We have taken a range of action against the company but they have continued to operate unlawfully.

“As a result, in addition to our enforcement activity to clear the sites, we have launched a criminal investigation.”

The Scottish Environmental Protection Agency said it is investigating whether criminal offences have been committed at HES’s Scottish storage sites in Dundee and Shotts.

A spokesperson for the Cabinet Office said all Pettigrew’s allegations were “completely untrue”.