Garry Pettigrew, a businessman charged with illegally storing medical waste including human body parts, has had his case dropped after a year-long trial. Pettigrew’s Healthcare Environmental Services (HES) was closed after losing NHS waste contracts. The claims against him pertained to sites near Shotts, Lanarkshire and Dundee, Scotland. However, new evidence that emerged last month was being examined by lawyers and eventually led prosecutors to rule there should be no further proceedings at this time.
The trial, which began in November 2020, heard from Peter Wightwick, a contractor who testified that clearing HES’ Shotts site cost almost £660,000 and took almost all of 2020 due to its heavy contamination of 391 tonnes of medical waste. Wightwick testified that his team had to burst open pallets of medical waste, revealing human body parts mixed with other discarded items such as a penguin carcass that allegedly originated from Edinburgh Zoo. Other dead animals were alleged to have been found at the site and were so decomposed that they could not be identified.
HES went into liquidation in 2019 after losing its NHS contracts in England and Scotland. Pettigrew testified that he had received death threats when he made 400 staff redundant in 2018. After the trial was closed, a Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) spokesperson said “the procurator fiscal decided that there should be no further criminal proceedings at this time.”
The Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa) also said: “As Scotland’s environmental protection agency, Sepa are clear that environmental compliance is non-negotiable. We use every tool available to us with the aim of successfully detecting, disrupting and deterring environmental non-compliance.” They submitted a report to the procurator fiscal regarding Pettigrew and Healthcare Environmental Services Limited
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