On 4 November 2021, Colin Barnes of Podmore Lane, Scarning, Dereham, Norfolk returned to Norwich Magistrates’ Court after an earlier appearance on 12 May 2021.

At this time he admitted storing end of life motor vehicles, car parts, gear boxes and suspension units illegally at his site in Podmore Lane. Magistrates deferred sentence for 6 months and warned Barnes that if he failed to clear the site he risked a prison sentence.

When officers returned to inspect the site in October 2021, they found little improvement and saw that new end of life vehicles had arrived.

Magistrates heard that despite the warnings given in May, Barnes had not cleared the site at Podmore Lane of stockpiled scrap vehicles. The stockpile contained pollutants such as fuel, brake fluid, batteries and tyres.

Environment Agency prosecutor, Sarah Dunne told the court that Barnes, had previous convictions for similar offences spanning a decade.

He had been given “chance after chance” to clear the waste and to work with the Environment Agency. However, the site remained a risk to the environment and undermined law-abiding competitors who operated within the law.

Sentencing Barnes to 16 weeks’ imprisonment, the chair of the bench, Mr Nicholas Clarke, told Barnes that his “wilful refusal” made custody the only option.

He told Barnes that the prison sentence would be suspended for 2 years and made an order requiring Barnes to remediate the site by 17 January 2022. He warned Barnes that, if he failed to clear the waste and continued to stockpile waste, he would be brought back to court. He warned him that this is his, “final, final chance” and if he came back to court, he should, “bring a bag”.

Mr Clarke said the bench’s priority is to protect the environment and warned Barnes that the impact of his behaviour would contaminate the land for generations to come.

Barnes was ordered to pay costs of £8,289.79 and a victim surcharge of £150 within 28 days.

After hearing the verdict, Enforcement Team Leader for East Anglia Area Lesley Robertson said:

This case shows why we pursue offenders through the courts. Magistrates will not hesitate to impose a custodial sentence where necessary.

Storing and treating waste illegally without an environmental permit meant that Mr Barnes operated at a commercial advantage, undermining legitimate business.

Owning a piece of land means accepting a responsibility to the surrounding area and all that resides there, be it business, homes or wildlife.

We urge anyone with information about waste crime to contact our hotline 0800 80 70 60 or anonymously to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 or on their email

Additional information

Colin Barnes pleaded guilty to this charge:

Between 14 November 2019 and 30 January 2021 at CT Barnes Autos, Podmore Lane, Scarning, Dereham did operate a regulated facility, namely a waste operation for the deposit, treatment and storage of waste, except under and to the extent authorised by an environmental permit contrary to Regulations 12 and 38(1)(a) Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016.

New laws and a Code of Practice are being introduced to resolve the remaining commercial rent debts accrued because of the pandemic, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has announced today (Tuesday 9 November 2021).

Commercial tenants are protected from eviction until 25 March 2022, thanks to government action last year to provide firms with breathing space and help protect jobs when certain businesses had to close in full or in part during the pandemic. This provides time for landlords and tenants to negotiate how to share the cost of commercial rent debts caused by the pandemic.

From today, these negotiations will be underpinned by a new Code of Practice, providing landlords and tenants with a clear process for settling outstanding debts before the new arbitration process comes into force.

The Code sets out that, in the first instance, tenants unable to pay in full should negotiate with their landlord in the expectation that the landlord waives some or all rent arrears where they are able to do so.

From 25 March 2022, new laws introduced in the Commercial Rent (Coronavirus) Bill, being introduced in Parliament today, will establish a legally-binding arbitration process for commercial landlords and tenants who have not already reached an agreement, following the principles in the Code of Practice. Subject to Parliamentary passage, this will come into force next year.

The Bill will apply to commercial rent debts related to the mandated closure of certain businesses such as pubs, gyms and restaurants during the pandemic. Debts accrued at other times will not be in scope.

These laws will come into force in England and Wales, and Northern Ireland will have a power in the Bill to introduce similar legislation.

The result of the arbitration process will be a legally-binding agreement the landlord and tenant must adhere to, resolving rent arrears disputes and helping the market return to normal as quickly as possible.

From today, the government is also protecting commercial tenants from debt claims, including County Court Judgements (CCJs), High Court Judgements (HCJs) and bankruptcy petitions, issued against them in relation to rent arrears accrued during the pandemic.

This measure will provide further protection to businesses which had to close and accumulated debts during the pandemic, while protections from forfeiture for business tenancies are in place under the Coronavirus Act 2020.

Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said:

Today’s measures provide commercial landlords and tenants with the clarity and certainty > they need to plan ahead and recover from the pandemic.

We encourage landlords and tenants to keep working together to reach their own agreements ahead of the new laws coming into place, and we expect tenants capable of paying rent to do so.

UK Hospitality CEO Kate Nicholls OBE said:

We welcome the publication of the updated Code of Practice. Vitally important is the emphasis on ongoing negotiation to share the burden of the impact of lockdowns and restrictions that prevented hospitality businesses from trading for so much of the last 18 months. It is in the long-term interests of landlords and tenants to come together and find solutions that ensure business survival and that do not undermine the economic recovery.

We share government’s view that arbitration should be a last resort and this process must take into account the exceptional and existential level of pain that hospitality businesses have faced over the last 18 months. It must not impact this industry’s ability to rapidly recover and create jobs throughout the country.

Helen Dickinson OBE, Chief Executive of the British Retail Consortium, said:

The overwhelming majority of retailers with stores just want the breathing space to trade their way out of the debt unavoidably built up during the pandemic and a constructive agreement with their landlord.

While we support the principle of compulsory arbitration, the devil will be in the detail on issues around what tenant viability really means in practice and the power of arbitrators. We will engage closely and constructively with government to help ensure their proposals protect otherwise viable businesses, secure the recovery, and protect jobs.

British Property Federation CEO Melanie Leech said:

Property owners and their tenants should be wholly focused on working together to continue the economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. The majority have already reached agreement on the treatment of Covid-related rent arrears, with millions of pounds of support being provided by property owners to tenants in distress.

The publication of an updated Code of Practice is a clear signal and framework for the minority who have not yet done so, to come together, reach agreement and look to the future.

Survey data from the British Property Federation indicates that agreement has been reached on the treatment of rent arrears in the vast majority of cases – more than 80% – since the start of the pandemic.

Today’s announcement follows the Autumn Budget which included further measures to support commercial landlords and tenants. This includes reducing the burden of business rates in England by freezing the business rates multiplier for a further year – a tax cut worth £4.6 billion over 5 years – and introducing a 50% business rates discount for the retail, hospitality, and leisure sectors in England.

• the Code of Practice applies across the UK. The legislation will apply to England and Wales, with a delegated power for Northern Ireland. Scotland has adopted an alternative approach to commercial evictions since the start of the pandemic, due to different property legislation and market conditions
• the intention is for the new legal arbitration process to come into force from 25 March 2022, subject to Parliamentary passage of the Commercial Rent (Coronavirus) Bill that has been introduced today
• the laws will apply to businesses which were mandated to close, in full or in part, from March 2020 until the date restrictions ended for their sector. Debts accrued at other times will not be in scope
• for those tenancies that fall within scope of the Bill and have failed to reach agreement, either party can apply for arbitration unilaterally, as a backstop after negotiations have failed. Parties are free to continue to negotiate outside of the legal arbitration process once it comes into force. The Code signposts tenants and landlords to forms of alternative dispute resolution, such as mediation, if they wish to pursue this
• the government encourages landlords and tenants to negotiate their own agreement where possible instead of resorting to the arbitration process
• the window to apply for arbitration will be 6 months from the date legislation comes into force, with a maximum time frame to repay of 24 months
• the new Code of Practice replaces the ‘Code of Practice for commercial property relationships’ originally published on 19 June 2020 and updated in April 2021
• the legal arbitration process will be delivered by private arbitrators in accordance with guidelines set out in the legislation, and they will have to go through an approval process to demonstrate their impartiality and competency to supply dispute resolution services. BEIS will publish a list of approved bodies in due course, and landlords and tenants within scope will be able to apply directly to any approved arbitration body for their dispute resolution if negotiations have failed
• landlords are encouraged to attempt to reach a negotiated agreement with tenants rather than pursue a CCJ. Where a CCJ is issued, this can be considered within the legal arbitration process when this comes into effect.

• Two new programmes to boost women’s climate leadership and support those most vulnerable to climate change.

• Ministers and representatives from private sector and civil society from across the world will meet at Gender Day at COP26 to announce new commitments which address the links between climate action and gender equality.

At its COP26 Gender Day on Tuesday 9 November, the UK will announce £165 million to tackle climate change while addressing the inequalities that make women and girls more vulnerable to climate change and empowering them to take climate action.

Around the world, the UN has found that women are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change than men, in part because they constitute a large majority of the world’s poor and often depend on small-scale farming for a livelihood, which is particularly vulnerable to climate change. Women and children can comprise 80% of those displaced by climate-related disaster. But addressing gender inequality has also been proven to advance efforts to tackle climate change.

£165 million in UK funding will drive forward these aims:

• up to £45 million to help empower local communities and grassroots women’s groups in Asia and the Pacific to challenge gender inequalities and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

• £120 million to build resilience, prevent pollution, protect biodiversity, strengthen renewable energy and better manage waste, while also supporting women’s leadership, access to finance, education and skills in Bangladesh.

The chair of the flagship Gender Day event, UK International Champion on Adaptation and Resilience for the COP26 Presidency, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, said:

It is women, girls and those who are already most marginalised, that will be most severely impacted by climate change. But they also have a critical role to play to address the climate crisis.

The UK is committed to addressing this dual challenge head on, committing new funding to empower communities and women’s groups to take locally-led adaptation action, to build local, national and global resilience. I urge more countries to make commitments to implement the UNFCCC Gender Action Plan and deliver the goals of the Feminist Action for Climate Justice.

Through its COP26 Presidency, the UK has been urging countries around the world to put gender equality at the heart of climate action, and will today convene ministers and other actors to discuss new action to tackle gender and climate change. A number of countries and stakeholders will also announce bold new gender and climate commitments today.

The UK will jointly launch a toolkit on gender-smart climate finance. Co-led by CDC, the UK’s Development Finance Institution, the toolkit will improve understanding on the opportunities of gender-sensitive climate investment by providing guidance to the finance community on how to deliver climate outcomes while promoting gender equality and women’s economic opportunities.

Fatou Jeng, Founder, Clean Earth Gambia and Co-Lead YOUNGO Women and Gender working group, said:

Gender inequality creates additional burdens and barriers for women and girls during times of conflict and climate-related crisis which increases their risks of hunger, food insecurity and violence. But women play fundamental roles in local food systems and are carers and activists, which make them uniquely placed to drive longer term climate resilience.

Women should be involved in the policy making, project planning and implementation of climate adaptation projects, and gender equality should be a key portion in climate financing. If gender equality is not taken as a serious issue in our climate decision-making, climate financing and climate adaptation processes, it will undermine opportunities for women in vulnerable communities to drive effective climate change adaptation and mitigation approaches that meet their needs.

COP26 President Alok Sharma and Anne-Marie Trevelyan will host the UK’s Presidency Gender Day event accompanied by Little Amal, the 3.5 metre puppet travelling 8,000km in support of refugees, and Brianna Fruean, a Samoan Climate Change activist.

The First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, will speak along with youth advocate Fatou Jeng, UN Women Deputy Executive Director Asa Regner and Indigenous activist Tarcila Rivera Zea, for a discussion on how to enable gender equality through climate actions. The Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, will also address the event.

Minister for Europe and the Americas, Wendy Morton, will also announce the UK’s new commitment to develop a FCDO girls’ education and climate policy to help secure concerted global action on climate change in the education sector, to prevent climate change disrupting girls’ education and empowering girls to take climate action.

This follows COP26 Youth and Public Empowerment Day last week, where the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy for Girls’ Education Helen Grant announced support for girls’ education in the face of climate change. This includes an £85,000 research grant to support the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. The Centre will produce better information on the education needs of refugee children to enable a more effective international response.

New UK funding will address the dual challenge of gender inequality and climate change, including:

• up to £45 million funding for the Community Resilience Partnership Programme (CRPP) to help empower local communities and grassroots women’s groups in Asia and the Pacific to challenge gender inequalities, and adapt to the impacts of climate change. This funding is part of the UK’s Climate Action for a Resilient Asia (CARA) programme (up to £274 million), announced at yesterday’s (Monday 8 November) Adaptation, Loss and Damage Day. The UK is the largest donor to CRPP, which is managed by the Asian Development Bank.

• £120million funding for the Bangladesh Climate and Environment Programme to build resilience, prevent pollution, protect biodiversity, strengthen renewable energy and better manage waste, while also supporting women’s access to finance, education and skills in Bangladesh.

The UK has been urging countries around the world to put gender equality at the heart of climate action in line with the Gender Action Plan COP25 agreed in 2019, with a focus on new commitments made under the priority actions of the Generation Equality Forum action coalition on Feminist Action for Climate Justice (FACJ) which the UK joined in June.

Under the 2X Collaborative the 2X Climate Finance Taskforce is launching a toolkit and guidance notes on gender-smart climate finance. The taskforce is led by CDC, the UK’s Development Finance Institution, together with the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and will support the finance community to make climate finance investments which close gender gaps across different sectors. These tools will improve understanding on the opportunities of applying a gender-lens to climate investments and so mobilise additional capital that delivers both climate outcomes and promotes gender equality and women’s economic opportunities.

The climate crisis is a major threat to girls’ education, as climate-related disasters disrupt nearly 40 million children’s education every year. But ensuring that girls can access 12 years of quality education supports them to be more resilient to climate shocks and empowers them to lead change, including to help address the climate crisis. Driving progress against the G7-endorsed global targets to get 40 million more girls into school and 20 million more girls reading by 2026 is crucial to the global climate response.

Little Amal is a giant 3.5 metre-tall puppet created by a young Syrian refugee child. In 2021 she will walk 8,000 km across Turkey, Greece, Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and the UK to focus attention on the urgent needs of young refugees. Little Amal will be joining this event to shed light not only on the ways in which young women and girls are disproportionately impacted by climate change, but also the important role they have to play as agents of change in climate action.

Next steps in developing the design for one of the world’s first small modular reactors (SMR) has been backed by £210 million in new government funding for Rolls-Royce SMR, the UK government has announced today (Tuesday 9 November 2021), delivering on the Prime Minister’s Ten Point Plan and creating good high-skilled jobs.

Matched by private sector funding of over £250 million, today’s investment will take forward phase 2 of the Low-Cost Nuclear project to further develop SMR design and take it through the regulatory processes to assess suitability of potential deployment in the UK.

New nuclear has a crucial role to play in providing reliable, affordable, low carbon energy as Britain works to reduce its dependency on volatile fossil fuels and exposure to global gas price spikes.

SMRs have the potential to be less expensive to build than traditional nuclear power plants because of their smaller size. Their modular nature of the components offers the potential for parts to be produced in dedicated factories and shipped by road to site – reducing construction time and cost. Rolls Royce SMR estimate that each Small Modular Reactor could be capable of powering 1 million homes – equivalent to a city the size of Leeds.

Today’s news comes as Parliament considers the Nuclear Energy Financing Bill which establishes a new financing model for nuclear projects, known as the Regulated Asset Base (RAB). This would attract a wider range of private investment into these projects, reducing build costs, consumers’ energy bills and Britain’s reliance on overseas developers for finance.

The UK is investing millions into the nuclear industry, including up to £1.7 billion to bring at least one large-scale nuclear project to a final investment decision, and a new £120 million Future Nuclear Enabling Fund to provide targeted support towards further nuclear projects as part of the Net Zero Strategy.

Business and Energy Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said:

This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for the UK to deploy more low carbon energy than ever before and ensure greater energy independence.

Small modular reactors offer exciting opportunities to cut costs and build more quickly, ensuring we can bring clean electricity to people’s homes and cut our already-dwindling use of volatile fossil fuels even further.

In working with Rolls Royce, we are proud to back the largest engineering collaboration the UK has ever seen – uniting some of the most respected and innovating organisations on the planet. Not only can we maximise British content, create new intellectual property and reinvigorate supply chains, but also position our country as a global leader in innovative nuclear technologies we can potentially export elsewhere.

By harnessing British engineering and ingenuity, we can double down on our plan to deploy more home-grown, affordable clean energy in this country.

Rolls Royce Chief Executive Warren East said:

The SMR programme is one of the ways that Rolls-Royce is meeting the need to ensure the UK continues to develop innovative ways to tackle the global threat of climate change.

With the Rolls-Royce SMR technology, we have developed a clean energy solution which can deliver cost competitive and scalable net zero power for multiple applications from grid and industrial electricity production to hydrogen and synthetic fuel manufacturing.

The business could create up to 40,000 jobs, through UK deployment and export enabled growth. As a major shareholder in Rolls-Royce SMR, we will continue to support its path to successful deployment.

Today’s £210 million grant follows £18 million invested in November 2019, which has already delivered significant development of their initial design as part of Phase One of the Low-Cost Nuclear project.

Today’s investment comes as COP26 continues its focus on science and innovation.

Fellow at the Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering Dame Sue Ion said:

This is extremely welcome news and demonstrates the potential of advanced nuclear power, which could be expanded safely to improve the overall efficiency of our energy system, with cheaper stable low carbon power to help meet the UK’s net zero goal.

This welcome recognition of the innovative approach taken by the Rolls Royce-led team gives the UK a real chance to regain its place at the top table in nuclear energy internationally and create a new manufacturing base for cutting-edge power generation, helping boost our economy and our export potential.

This £210 million contribution from government has been awarded through the Low-Cost Nuclear challenge at UK Research and Innovation.

• Read details about the government’s previous £18 million investment in Rolls-Royce SMR’s plans for new Small Nuclear Reactors
• in May, the UK government declared the Generic Design Assessment (GDA) open to advanced nuclear technologies – including SMRs – for the first time. The process allows the UK’s independent nuclear regulators to assess the safety, security and environmental implications of new reactor designs. Rolls-Royce SMR have stated their intention to enter the GDA process shortly
• Generic Design Assessment (GDA) is a process carried out by the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) and the Environment Agency (EA) (the Nuclear Regulators) to assess the safety, security, and environmental protection aspects of a nuclear reactor intended for deployment in Great Britain. It is an upfront, non-site-specific (hence generic) assessment of a design which aims to provide confidence that it is capable of deployment in the UK. This is separate to the planning processes which would need to be completed for any new nuclear project
• this programme will support the aims, set out in the Net Zero Strategy, of maintaining options and informing any potential investment decisions during the next Parliament

How the government is kickstarting our nuclear industry:

• in the Spending Review, we announced up to £1.7 billion of direct government funding to enable at least one large-scale nuclear project to the point of FID by the end of this Parliament
• a new £120 million Future Nuclear Enabling Fund will provide targeted support to address barriers to entry. This fund will be part of the measures to inform investment decisions during the next Parliament on further nuclear projects
• the Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill will introduce a Regulated Asset Base (RAB) model as an option to fund future nuclear projects. A RAB model is a tried and tested method, typically used in the UK, to finance large scale infrastructure assets such as water, gas and electricity networks
• the £210 million SMR funding is part of the £385 million Advanced Nuclear Fund – announced last year in the Prime Minister’s 10 Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution. We are providing funding for a SMR design and are progressing plans for an Advanced Modular Reactor demonstrator in the early 2030s