FUMING residents are calling for action to be taken against the owners of the recycling depot in St Albans which, last week, caused mayhem with a massive fire.

Before the fire had even been put out, angry neighbours of the composting centre had resumed their ongoing battle with the Appspond Lane site's owners, EQ Waste Management Limited.

Resident Marlene Pincott said: 'Living here is hell. We have to put up with the noise of lorries coming and going at all hours, the smell is so bad we can hardly sit in our own back garden and the mounds of waste are far higher than they should be.

'We have been complaining to the council for over two years now, yet very little changes and what does change takes forever to do so. We feel they are blatantly breaching the conditions placed on them and want something to be done.'

EQ provides a recycling waste service for items such as green waste, horse manure and horse bedding. However, currently the licence is held by a company called Reunion that went into liquidation, and it now allows EQ to operate under it whilst consideration takes place over the possible permanent transfer of the licence.

EQ has been prosecuted by the Environment Agency for several breaches of its licence, served with a compliance notice from Hertfordshire County Council for breaking conditions over the height of its waste mounds and faces further county council investigations over other alleged breaches of planning permission conditions.

The prosecutions came earlier this month when the company and company director at the time of the offences, Adrian Lupson, were fined a total of £9,000 with £1,240 costs, when they pleaded guilty to three offences of breaching a condition of a waste management licence at the St Albans site, with six other similar offences taken into consideration.

The breaches all stemmed from the storage and processing of various types of waste.

After the case, Environment Agency officer Roger Hoare said: 'While composting facilities provide a key role for the recycling of waste, it is essential that facilities are run correctly to ensure the avoidance of pollution.

'In this case, the site was in breach of its licence and the agency felt that the environment was being put at risk.'

The compliance notice was served on the company on February 28 telling it some of its mounds of waste were above the legal limit of four metres and giving it five weeks to rectify the matter.

Five months on, the council says the mounds are still as much as twice the legal limit.

Mr Rob Egan, site monitoring and enforcement officer for the council, said: 'We are actively pursuing these matters but do not wish to drive any company out of business unnecessarily. However, if the company does not comply, action will be taken.'

The county council is continuing investigations to ensure limits placed on the company regarding its trading hours and the number of lorry visits per day are not being broken.

EQ declined to comment this week but commenting on the fire last week one of its directors, Mr Simon Lupson, said: 'We have been here over a year and to date we have a very good record.'