A SKIP company director fined £20,000 after an undercover surveillance team saw hundreds of tonnes of rubbish -- including asbestos -- dumped at a proposed golf course development in Blackburn has pledged to clear the site.

Rubbish from across East Lancashire - including waste from a Blackburn nightclub, a Whalley restaurant and a Clitheroe company - was found by Environment Agency officers investigating unlawful tipping on land around Whitehalgh Farm, off Brokenstone Road, Feniscowles.

The waste was taken to the site, purportedly for use in landscaping the land into a golf course.

But the site did not have a waste management licence from the Environment Agency, and the waste tipped at the site included various hazardous items like asbestos.

Frank Owen, a director of Enviroskips Ltd, of Hapton Valley, Accrington Road, Burnley, pleaded guilty to two waste offences and was fined a total of £20,000. He was also told to pay a further £20,000 in costs to the Environment Agency.

He has now agreed to clear from the site the waste his firm dumped there.

Steven Zdolyny, prosecuting for the Agency, told Blackburn magistrates that agency officers were concerned at the quantity and types of waste being left at the site.

Planning permission was given by Blackburn with Darwen Council for a golf course in 1998 -- but no approval was given for dumping on the site.

Between May 13 and May 20 2000, Agency officers watched as vehicles registered to Owen's company dumped 19 loads of waste from 20 tonne trucks in that period alone.

As a whole, Owen admitted dumping more than 4,000 tonnes of waste at the Whitehalgh Farm site.

Magistrates were told that during the operation, evidence of cement-based asbestos, as well as glass and pottery fragments, wood, plaster, concrete and mortar, cast iron fragments, plastic, paper and other debris were found on the site.

The vehicles had been loaded up at Enviroskips' premises in Hapton and emptied on the Whitehalgh Farm site.

In June and October 2000, a series of trial pits were dug at the site by the Environment Agency. Eleven of them revealed waste which posed a hazard, and tests showed that the soil had been contaminated.

Mr Zdolyny told the court: "Owen's activities were carried out deliberately and for substantial profit, by avoiding the costs of legal waste disposal. In total, more than 4,000 tonnes of waste was dumped by Owen on the site, which he has now agreed to remove."

A second planning application for a golf course was refused earlier this year by councillors, after being told hundreds of thousands of tonnes of landfill would have to be dumped on the site.

The Local Government Ombudsman has also fined Blackburn with Darwen Council £5,000 after a resident near to the site claimed their quality of life had been affected by the dumping. The ombudsman inspector found that more could have been done to ensure flytipping did not take place.