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 on Monday 8 October to 3 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 2 further charges of ‘knowingly causing’ the deposit of waste at 2 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 2 weeks for each of the 5 offences. These will run concurrently and be added to his current sentence.

Waste was dumped from a lorry outside a business unit on an industrial estate on Motherwell Way, West Thurrock on 4 October 2017 in front of 2 eye witnesses.

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 driver could not be identified.

The following day on 5 October a further pile of waste was discovered dumped illegally outside the closed gates of Barking Power Station. The offence, which took 2 minutes to commit, was caught on camera and identified the same heavy goods vehicle, driven by Egan.

Less than 2 weeks later on 18 October Egan dumped a pile of waste at the same Motherwell Way West Thurrock Industrial Estate in front of 2 eye witnesses.

Just 2 days after that Egan was stopped by Essex Police and his vehicle seized. It was carrying waste.

Landlords of the sites had removed the dumped waste at their own expense.

The court heard that Egan has a previous conviction for operating without a waste carriers licence in January 2017.

After the hearing Enforcement Team Leader Lesley Robertson said:

Fly-tipping is a blight on the countryside. When the amount of waste tipped is this significant, it is not just an eyesore or a huge inconvenience for those whose land have been dumped on, it is waste crime. Waste criminals undermine legitimate businesses, often leaving those dumped on to foot the clean-up.

Mr Egan seems to have had little regard for these people, the public at large or the environment. He was disqualified from driving at the time but dumped lorry loads of waste across Essex and the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham and allowed his vehicle to be used for the same purpose by others.

Anyone who transports or disposes of waste has a Duty of Care to ensure waste is handled correctly and taken to a legitimate permitted facility. Businesses and individuals must check that the person taking away their waste is registered to do so. Egan was not.

If anyone has any information about waste crime they can report it on the Environment Agency’s incident hotline 0800 80 70 60 or anonymously to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

Dstl is offering nearly half a million pounds for innovations in machine learning which can model future conflicts.

Digital Catapult is organising and facilitating a Pit Stop (similar to a “hackathon”) event with the aim of identifying innovative ideas for the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in future Dstl decision-support combat models.

This is designed as an innovation activity where a wide range of Suitably Qualified and Experienced Persons (SQEPs) come together to tackle a specific problem area. Digital Catapult is responsible for the Open Call, reviewing applications, vetting and inviting all potential attendees. At the end of the Pit Stop event participants will be invited to submit proposals to Dstl for follow-on studies, investigations and/or developments arising from the Pit Stop event discussions and activities. Contracts are available up to a total of £400,000.

Most of MOD’s current combat modelling techniques however either represent command decisions through simple rules-based systems or rely heavily on human users to provide the command context, whilst simulation handles the complex conclusions of the outcome.

These systems often require great physical effort to run and only consider a limited set of scenarios, resulting in significant uncertainty regarding outcomes.

As part of ongoing work looking at developing a new suite of capabilities that both reduce the manpower needed to make credible command decisions and enable the simulations to consider a wider range of situations, Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) is seeking to understand how AI can be applied to support this mission.

Mark Gould, Principal Analyst at Dstl, said:

By working with Digital Catapult, Dstl will expand its supplier base to include up and coming small and medium enterprises who are developing exciting innovations in AI and modelling but who don’t currently work with defence. These new suppliers offer us opportunities not only to expand our supplier base but also to explore how innovations being used outside of defence can be used to improve the support we offer to MOD into the future.

For more information and to register your interest visit the Digital Catapult website

The closing date for the registration is 15 October 2018.

A waste dumper already serving time in prison has had his sentence increased by Basildon Crown Court.

Good afternoon First Vice Prime Minister, Ministers, ladies and gentlemen.

It is a pleasure to be here today to address you, and I must thank the British-Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce and their partners for the invitation.

I have always believed that trade, and the freedom of nations and individuals to freely access goods and services from overseas, is vital to international security.

Part of the same continuum – one inhabited by political and social stability.

Trade is not an end in itself. Rather, it is the foundation of commercial success and national prosperity. That prosperity, in turn, underpins political stability, and that stability underpins security.

I had said before that trade and security are part of th same continuum. Unbalance one of these factors, and peace, prosperity and freedom are all endangered. It is axiomatic that there can be no military security without economic security.

Few countries understand this better then Ukraine. We are here today not only to deepen the commercial ties between our two nations, but as a show of solidarity and unity in the face of external aggression.

The United Kingdom, of course, has also recently suffered direct action by Russia.

If nations are to successfully meet and combat external aggression, then they must first ensure their own strength, both politically and economically. Part of this is winning internal battles against the forces that stifle economic activity and threaten investment, such as corruption and bureaucracy.

It is no accident that those nations with the strongest defence capabilities also have the strongest economies.

The UK stands ready to help Ukraine in any way we can in these challenges, not only for our mutual prosperity, but as a common defence.

That is why I am here today.

Ukraine’s economy has undoubtedly suffered in recent years, not only through the annexation of physical territory and infrastructure, but through the uncertainty of ongoing conflict.

Yet there are encouraging signs that the recovery is underway. Last year the total trade between Ukraine and the UK topped £1 billion, following two years of strong growth across the board, in goods and services, imports and exports.

Much of this comes from Ukrainian companies, like many here today, who recognise the inherent strengths of the United Kingdom as a place to invest.

Our capital is the world’s leading financial centre, and a springboard into global markets. The UK is in the right time zone to trade with Shanghai over breakfast and New York over tea.

We are home to some of the world’s leading universities, producing a highly capable workforce.

And crucially, we are an unrivalled repository of commercial expertise, in everything from Fintech to infrastructure. This gives the UK a unique capacity to help Ukrainian businesses expand and thrive.

But it is not just the United Kingdom’s strengths that have enabled our bilateral relationship to thrive.

British companies, like many others across the world, are increasingly aware of all that Ukraine has to offer, and the huge commercial opportunities that exist in the country.

GlaxoSmithKline, Astra Zeneca and Vodafone, to name just a few, have substantially increased their operations in Ukraine in recent years.

They see a country not only with a large and well-developed internal market – Ukraine has five cities of over one million people – but also the hard-working and well-educated workforce.

On top of this, Ukraine boasts abundant natural resources, a broad industrial base and a variety of well-developed sectors.

Lviv is undergoing something of an economic boom, driven by its enviable IT industry and service-based economy.

And of course, this historic bread basket of Europe is among the world’s leading agri-producers, and my own Department for International Trade is taking steps to improve our bilateral relations in this area, offering British expertise in agricultural machinery, grain storage, and food processing.

I don’t need to tell the people in this room that Ukraine is a nation with a vast amount of untapped economic potential.

But as well as external threats there are, as I have mentioned, internal challenges to be resolved if the country is to fully realise its opportunities.

Corruption exists, as it does in many nations around the world.

A key difference here though is awareness, and a strong desire to tackle and resolve the issue.

The Ukrainian people recognise the threat that corruption, inefficient public ownership, and overzealous and stifling bureaucracy pose to foreign investment, economic output, and ultimately prosperity.

The establishment of a Business Ombudsman and the National Anti-Corruption Agency are important steps in the right direction, as is the commendable ambition to bring Ukraine into the top ten nations globally on the ease of doing business rankings. It has already become the most improved country in the world since 2010.

Ukraine has made more progress in the last 4 years than in the previous 20, particularly in reform of the banking sector, good governance institutions and launching the electronic asset and income declaration system.

I am proud to say that the United Kingdom, and my own Department, is taking a leading role in helping Ukraine to achieve these goals.

We are providing assistance to improve the business climate and reforming the tax system, making the country an increasingly attractive place for global investors.

We are helping with the reform of Ukraine’s energy sector, aiming to eliminate reliance on Russian gas and streamlining the pricing structure of Ukraine’s own production.

This year, we are delivering a £35 million package to support reforms in good governance, anti-corruption and defence.

And we are helping British companies to share their expertise with their Ukrainian counterparts, opening new commercial opportunities across the economy.

This has been instigated, in part, by a wave of joint UK-Ukraine trade events, from the visit of the Deputy Minster Mykolska in June, where she visited women entrepreneurs at DIT’s She Trades event, to the Group CEO of Jaguar/Land Rover opening their new sales centre in Kiev.

But perhaps the most important immediate task, and certainly the most important facing my own department, is the post-Brexit transition of the Ukraine-EU Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement into a new bilateral settlement.

We have designated Ukraine as one of the UK’s post-Brexit priority markets, and our ambition is to further improve and liberalise the trading relationship between us.

But our first step must be to provide certainty and continuity for those firms currently operating between the UK and Ukraine. Officials in the UK and Ukraine are working together to design a bilateral agreement that will replicate the effects of the DCFTA, to come into effect at the end of our transition period.

Minimising the disruption to our existing trading relationship is the highest priority for the United Kingdom.

Yet I appreciate that there will also be a degree of uncertainty around Brexit. This is equally true in Ukraine, not only from a commercial standpoint, but from a geopolitical one.

But the Referendum result was not a vote for insularity. We are not turning in on ourselves, abandoning our overseas partners or abdicating our international responsibilities.

The United Kingdom is not isolationist, but global. The British people chose to embrace the opportunities of the wider world.

Let me reiterate that our exit from the EU does not change the UK’s commitment to Ukraine’s development, growth and prosperity.

Nor does it alter our commitment to sanctions against Russia. Indeed, the Prime Minister has made it clear that we will look to carry over all existing EU sanctions at the time of our departure.

In August, the foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt made the case for additional sanctions against Russia from the United States, building a firm, united front with our allies.

This is not a path that we are about to waver from.

Our action encapsulates the message that I came here today to deliver – that the United Kingdom is standing alongside Ukraine, ready to lend our support to ensuring a safe and prosperous future for both our peoples.

The progress that has been made by Ukraine is hugely significant, and already the dividends are appearing.

Nothing should be taken for granted. But if we work together to meet the challenges of the future, then we can, and will, defend our freedom, our prosperity, and our liberty.