A BUILDER who fly-tipped building waste near the house of a man who he had argued with has been given a court bill of nearly £2,000.

Victoria Waudby, prosecuting for City of York Council, said council officers told Richard Michael Booth, 34, the legal way to dispose of building waste both when they saw him loading up his vehicle on March 16 and by letter later the same month.

On June 21, they found a steel girder, guttering, bags of sand and grit and other building items in an alleyway behind the house off Scarcroft Road.

Booth told them he had dumped them there after he had argued with the householder over price.

Following the argument, he had walked out of the job he had been doing at the house.

Booth, who represented himself, told the court the items were not waste and would have been used on the construction project.

About the rubbish dumped in the alleyway, he said: “Plenty of other builders are doing the same.”

He said he didn’t have room in the yard he used to put the items and he had been a builder for 16 years.

Mrs Waudby, for the City of York Council, said Booth told officers he had also taken building waste to a farm to be used for hard core there.

Booth, of York Street, Dunnington, pleaded guilty to fly-tipping, failure to ensure his waste was disposed of legally, failure to comply with a notice to tell the authorities what he had done with his waste between July 17, 2017, and July 18, 2018 and carrying waste without a waste operator’s licence.

York magistrates fined him £1,100 with £800.70 prosecution costs and a £35 statutory surcharge.

The court was told he had been offered the chance to avoid prosecution by paying two £200 penalty tickets, but had not done so.

Mrs Waudby said the council was concerned that he had been carrying waste without a waste operator’s licence for financial gain.

He had since bought a licence.