A serial waste dumper already serving time in prison has had his sentence increased.

Five times in one month large waste piles were dumped illegally outside business sites in Essex and London from a vehicle owned by Patrick Joseph Egan.

Egan, 30, of Grange Road, Grays, pleaded guilty at Basildon Crown Court to three charges of illegally dumping waste using a lorry at sites not permitted to accept it.

He was disqualified from driving at the time of the offences and also admitted two further charges of ‘knowingly causing’ the deposit of waste at two other locations.

Egan, who is currently serving a prison sentence for similar offences in Beckton in the borough of Newham London Borough Council, was sentenced to a further two weeks for each of the five offences – to run concurrently.

Judge Samantha Ceri Leigh said: “It would have made a difference if all matters were heard together as it would have shown the offending had been going on for a longer time.”

She said the totality of offences and sentence for offences from December 2017 taken forward by another agency were taken into consideration when sentencing the Environment Agency offences from October 2017 as they pre-dated the December offences.

Mr Gordon Starks, prosecuting for the Environment Agency told the court that waste was dumped from a lorry outside a business unit on an industrial estate on Motherwell Way, West Thurrock on October 4, 2017 in front of two eyewitnesses.

On that day, the same vehicle (owned by Egan) was seen reversing into Stifford Clays Road, Grays, the address of an Anglian Water Pumping Station. A witness realised waste had been tipped from the lorry, but couldn’t identify the driver.

Later that day, the same type of waste was found dumped at the main entrance gate to Tilda Ltd, in Coldharbour Lane, Rainham.

The following day on October 5 a further pile of waste was discovered dumped illegally outside the closed gates of Barking Power Station. The offence, which took two minutes to commit, was caught on camera and identified the same heavy goods vehicle, driven by Egan.

Less than two weeks later on October 18, Egan dumped a pile of waste at the same Motherwell Way West Thurrock Industrial Estate in front of two eye witnesses.

Just two days after that Egan was stopped by Essex Police and his vehicle seized, while carrying waste. The court heard that Egan has a previous conviction for operating without a waste carriers licence in January 2017.

Contact the Environment Agency’s incident hotline on 0800 807060.