Farmer fined after slurry floods neighbour's house

John Cockerill, 45, from Rosedale East, North Yorkshire, allowed manure to build up on his land until heavy rain on the evening of September 6 2008 caused slurry to flow from his property and into neighbouring properties and streams. The dirty water caused a "foul" three-inch flood in the kitchen and living area of neighbour June Crossley's home, causing extensive damage and forcing the pensioner to move out for more than a month. Cockerill pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing at Scarborough Magistrates' Court to offences of causing polluting matter to enter controlled waters and keeping controlled waste on a small-holding between September 6 2008 and April 14 2009. He was also convicted last year of five offences of failing to take reasonable steps to ensure the needs of an animal. Sentencing Cockerill at York Crown Court today, Judge James Spencer QC told him: "You have behaved in the most irresponsible manner. You deliberately and for your own purposes built up your herd to a number you could not manage - neither the animals, but more importantly the waste that they created. "The consequence was that it collected and collected until eventually there was no alternative, it had to escape somewhere and escape it did, when it rained heavily, into your neighbour's property so that she was unable to live there, such was the foul nature of the flood, for over a month." Judge Spencer ordered Cockerill to pay 6,296 compensation to the Environment Agency and a 2,000 fine. He was also told to pay 1,704 costs and a 15 victim surcharge. He told him: "If it means you have to sell your stock, that's what you must do so then when you start again, you can do it right." The court heard that Cockerill, who had a full-time job as a groundsman for Scarborough Borough Council, did very little about the state of his four-acre farm, despite repeated warnings and advice from the Environment Agency. Louise Azmi, prosecuting for the Environment Agency, told the court that Ms Crossley woke at around 3am on the night of the flood to find her home flooded with "foul-smelling" dirty water and saw slurry "gushing" down the hillside from the direction of Cockerill's farm. Environment Agency officers who visited the small-holding found a shed and concreted area covered in cattle waste and heaps of manure forming into slurry after mixing with rain water. A later visit by Defra resulted in two cows having to be put down because of poor health. Around six months after the first visit, the Environment Agency conducted a clean-up of the area, costing 6,296. Ms Azmi said the incident was classed as being a high risk to human health, although there was no evidence that anybody had become ill as a result. The court heard that a number of complaints had been made about the state of Cockerill's land since 1998. In mitigation, Ruth Cranidge told the court Cockerill had sold most of his herd and now had just 15 cows and 10 calves. She described the lifestyle of the defendant, who still lives with his parents, as "chaotic" and said he struggled to manage the upkeep of the farm and his cows around his full-time job. "He had far too many. It was chaos on the farm and the situation spiralled out of his control," she said. "He simply took on too much." Speaking after the sentencing, Environment Agency officers described the situation on the farm as the worst they had seen in 30 years. Jim Richards, an environment officer, said: "People like Cockerill give good farmers a bad name. "I'd never seen anything quite like it in my life. Farmers normally look after their animals very well but in this case everything was wrong, both from an animal welfare point of view and the pollution issue." Mr Richards said Ms Crossley was "very distressed" about the damage to her home and all the neighbours were "happy and relieved" that action had been taken.