Today at a store where I volunteer, there was post waiting for me, which in itself is not odd, but you know what they say about letters in Brown envelopes, never a good sign.

The envelope contained a letter from “the solictors of a Bentham based fire fighting foam manufacturer” (guess who) threatening me with legal action if i don’t take my posts down. I’ve attached their letter below. for a solicitors, there is bad grammer, likes it was rushed and I had to reread the last paragraph three times for it to make sense (they’ve not even got the company name right)!

As I decided to post the letter on here, I decided to take a look at their site, the URL takes you too a very badly designed web page that warns about their domain certificate not being secure – and not pointing to the correct domain. Its hard to take it seriously but I have.I have decided that I have done nothing wrong. My comments are about my experiences with their firm, they are sourced, maybe tinged with a little sarcasm, but hey the spice of life. It’s also funny they attack a small business owner and not the Environment Agency, The Guardian or the Ends Report.

Firstly they sent the letter to the place I Volunteer, very underhand, its not like my home address is a million miles away and they have it on legal retention from the Employment Tribunal I took them too (7 years minimum storage) and even if they have forgotten it, they can look it up on the UKs Government website!

Bentham, is also a very close knit community, I moved here to work at Angus’s, people working there know where I live. They have my home address, yet an address was chosen that “could” do damage to my reputation.
They also Know I have anxiety and Depression issues (despite their claims they didn’t, even though it was on my application form).
Again an underhand move?
I’ll update more when they reply to the eMail sent today to them. Also why do solicitors always send their reponse/threats on a Friday? Purposely?

The letter claims this “company” has a good reputation, maybe with it’s customers, but how many petrochemical companies read my post, I’d guess no more than Zero.

To make my position on this very clear.
I have taken on Lowell Portfolios for Harrassing Disabled “clients” (won), Yorkshire Water for “failing to provide reasonable adjustments” (won), Companies House (on going), Natwest (on going), HMRC for 5 years due to their corporation tax website not working properly (won), HS2 and SPAR (seperate) employment complaints (not taken forward by client), Legal Aid (lost).

Update: 30th June 2024
It’s now 10 days since the letter above and my reply to Angus Fires Solicitors and still I have heard nothing back. I can only assume that there is nothing thats been said that needs correcting.
for updates on Cleaner Benthams formation, visit their site www.cleaner-bentham.co.uk
I’d like to add on a personal level, that it’s taken the formation of the group to get Angus to take any sort of steps to rectify this situation.
Their permit was in threat of being suspended in October of 2023 by the Environment Agency, and seemingly no steps where taken. Since the article in May ’24, the month of June has been a busy one on the Angus Site.
Men in flouresent jackets hosing down the drains, and now a structure being built over the “lagoons” and testing both on and off the site.
People power does work. Unfortunately this comes at a personal price to myself, people I worked with and spoke to since I left, now turn their nose up at me in the street, menacing stares by senior management and other ex colleagues in the local supermarkets or staring at me through my stores window as they pass.
It’s not that I care this is happening nor, that it “scares” me, but it shows that there maybe is a culture inside of the “community business” of intimedation, manipulation and lies – about what the objectives here are. This is not a war on a company, this is about corporate responsability. Not just with the perpritator, but with the departments and companies responsable for keeping us safe.

The Environment Agency, A Government Department that has the ability to fine companies that damage the environment now in a capacity which will finacially hurt a company if they do not comply with safety standards, thus making it a more financially viable thing to obey the enviroment laws. The fine they can issue is unlimited, but why did they only threaten a suspension and wait 7/8 months until there was a public outcry.

Yorkshire Water, Yet another water company that doesn’t seem to know what it’s doing or it does and not telling people as profits over ride their obligations as a supplier.
Privately owned and paying Billions to UAE investment firms rather than investing money (it seems) to do their job.
PFA testing is dependant on which department is asked one says they do test for PFAs an other says they don’t test for PFAs (their website says they do), the question remains do they test for the PFAs that Angus use or that are found in pesticides? Do they research to see what ones are prevelant in the area? My bet is no as there are 10,000 known PFAs being used in the world.

In a time when things couldn’t get worse for the UK government, the sewerage has hit the fan.
Recently we hear of Known Contaminated Blood in the 1970’s and 1980’s, their cover up of the Sexual abuse of Children (which was made a matter of “National Security”), The Horizon Post Office Scandal and now The Environment Agency has been accused of “investing £15 million” in PFAs.

For those who have not read “The Most Polluted Town in the UK”,
PFA’s are a chemical that has been used around the world and have a clear carcinogenic link. It’s worth to note that these are used in the production of Electronics, Cosmetics and other modern products such as ‘non stick pans’ as well as firefighting foam and Fire Resistant protection.

One of the many issues with PFA Products, is if a firm has a testing site it brings dangers such as; if a test ‘overflow pond’ overflows and it is close to residential properties it can leak into the publics reach, also if the company has a borehole it maybe able to get into the water system (not the piped system the natural water system) and then into rivers, streams and other natural habitats. Killing of aquatic, insect and bird life.
These Dangers are also present when some of the PFAS are utilised by a Fire Service (such as foams and fire retardent uniforms) the run off from foams are going directly into the sewer system.

The UK’s very own “DuPont” has been revealed in a Guardian article about a North West firm who have violated their PFAS Permit Twenty times in the last Ten years of their Eleven year history. You can find the story here on my site and here in the original article)

Whilst this is happening, the Government Department that is supposed to be protecting us as citizens and the Environment (The Environmental Agency) is investing its Pensions into these Chemical firms.
The firms and amounts that were invested in (and amounts) are as follows,
Merck (£11.2m),
3M (£1.2m),
Honeywell (£1.2m),
Bayer (£838,000) and
Dupont (£158,000).

DuPont is the American company that pioneered the use of PFAS in consumer goods, and both 3M and DuPont (1998) have settled large class actions law suits in the U.S (3M $12.5bn).
The EU Parliament is not exempt from a finger point here as they u-turned on setting a date on making a law restricting the use of PFAs after being lobbied (probably with large amounts of cash) by these chemical giants.
What is more scary is that the detection of PFAS in our drinking water, rivers and seas is only recommended to the U.K.’s privatised water industry rather than being statute law.

Sources:
EA Pension Report
Scientific Report
Open Democracy Article
Dark Waters Trailer
The lawyer who became DuPonts worst nightmare Article
All sources are PDF’d and stored.

In 2014 Angus Fire was purchased from Kiddie Products, via a private management buy out, by a little known CEO called Paul Williams and Lloyds Group Equity management.

In my opinion there has been many unseen and unspoken dodgy dealings within the walls of the firm since 2014, from some Union Reps being nothing more than the right hand men of the management, to requests from the GM at the time (in eMail), to avoid paying import duty sending Computers to their offices in Thailand (he was given a golden handshake and asked to leave).
Safety Violations, including the computer that was supposed to be recording the emmissions from their chimmney stack hadn’t been working and the Maintenance Manager had been Fudging the results. I was not being allowed to fix the computer despite months of me trying to persuade the IT Manager, and the roof from Long Vulc (where the hose goes through part of the process) it’s said that the roof had been reported for being unsafe and this was known by the CEO it was going to happen and ignored until it did happen. It’s not only its staff Angus puts at risk, but nearby residents.
I’ve been involved in helping someone whose car was damaged by a falling roof tile from one of the non maintained buildings in Angus’s possesion, who them claimed “that it couldn’t have been a tile from their roof as our properties are all maintened” which is just not true at all.

Link to the original Guradian Article ;
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/24/yorkshire-town-angus-fire-bentham-forever-chemicals-pfas?mibextid=xfxF2i

All this goes on amid cost cutting, staff cutting and with Tens of Millions of pounds in payments of “loans interest” being paid to the Directors (available on companies house) and Includes payments to Lloyds Group equity partnership who has controlling interest.
After leaving, during the Employment Tribunal I exposed that the company may have been fiddling staff out of money they were owed through remaining holiday pay, short changing people who’d been made redundant (see my employment tribunal report. I was then threatened by their “in house counsel” for trying to help others claim the money they maybe owed, they even threatened legal action on the local ‘paper’ the Bentham News to take out an Advert I had paid for myself.
I told Nick (Nicholas) Brown (in house Legal Counsel at the time) this information was public knowledge and if they believed I was breaking the law, they can silence me by a court order ~ nothing happened, go figure.
Despite all this it is still said that Angus is the best employer in the town (by Angus Fire), the biggest maybe but no where near the best in my experience. Most people now employed by the company (especially in the office) come from outside Bentham.

I know most of this happened, I worked there from Mid June 2014 in the Computer (I.T. Department) and whistle blew to the Environment Agency and HMRC about the dodgy work practises going on.

This May in 2024 the same article in the Guardian blew the lid off probably the biggest failure of the Enviornment Agency, and United Utilities about PFAs or forever chemicals which Angus made at the Bentham plant,from 1970 until 2022, well into Angus Intrernational Safety Groups ownership of the Angus Plant.

As someone who lives in Bentham, the smell from the stack is probably the worst smell I’ve ever smelled, and it wafts across the town if the wind is blowing in the right direction and there are days when we can’t put our washing out due to the test of the foams, which creates pitch black acrid smoke from their foam test pit spilling across the town.

With regards to the final statement from Angus Fire, all I can say is from an ex-employees prospective, When I was there) it is the biggest load of cods whallop I’ve heard since Rushi Sunak started making Election Promises. The claims of transparency from the “Spoke person” for Angus Fire in Bentham, it seems that the company is as transparent as black paint.

An Angus Fire spokesperson said: “As Bentham’s biggest employer, we actively address all concerns related to local environmental impact and compliance. We are committed to continuous improvement in our operations, transparency, and working collaboratively with regulatory bodies to protect public health and the environment.”

https://www.endsreport.com/article/1874595/ends-angus-fire-investigation-need-know

Who is Ends?

The ENDS Report is the UK’s No 1 source of intelligence for environmental professionals, delivering news, analysis and reference across the carbon, environmental and sustainability agenda.
With over 40 years of industry knowledge, the editorial team delivers expert knowledge that helps you manage costs and risks around environmental factors and identify new business opportunities.
so all in all is a repretable source of information.

https://www.endsreport.com/article/1874595/ends-angus-fire-investigation-need-know

If the link becomes inactive, the pdf can be found here

We wait to see if Law suits will follow with the deep pockets of Equity owners, Lloyds Group Equity (who has controlling Interest – or PSC) and how many millions this will run into.

Updates: Change to title, addition of the link to the Guardians Article, addition and changes to some of the text to show my experieince of working with “The foam manufacturing plant in Bentham”.