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Angus Fire avoids public meeting?

Angus Fire avoids public meeting?

Tuesday, June 17, 2025

So transparent they're invisible.

As expectations build up for tonights public meeting called by North Yorkshire Council on Bentham Pollution issues, Angus Fires name is now oddly missing from the Town Councils website. We've also seen a copy of the schedule for tonight and there is no introduction for the local firms managment team.

In May, North Yorkshire Council called a public meeting with regards growing concerns over health after it was revealed that Angus Fires Site has the highest level of PFAS in the UK. 
Angus Fire made the wise decision of stepping up to answer questions as part of their "transparent approach" to dealing with the situation. 
We say transparent as the DERBS website which the firm uses to communicate with residents cannot be visited unless you have the link or even know it exists, it also seems to have been made purposely unsearchable by search engines.

Residents looked forward to questions being answered which were ignored (by giving political answers) when CBs solicitors approached Angus Fires Legal representation with questions on the situation and missing information from their technical reports. 

Cleaner Bentham decided that the public forum was the next good place to ask these questions of the firms CEO Paul Williams. 
Disappointingly, we found out today that Angus Fire looked to be no longer on the panel.
Bentham town councils website is notebly missing the Fire Fighting firms name from it's page when visited today (17/06/2025). 
This raises interesting questions:
1. Was it the statement on Morning Live (BBC1) where Angus Fires press company said "Angus Fire has always provided it's staff with the correct safety equipment"  (paraphrased) which is completely untrue (unless they meant through Covid).
or,
2. The questions asked by Cleaner Bentham to be answered at the town hall meeting? 

Will we ever know? or maybe we have the answer given to us by the firms absence about they've been lying to the Residents, the Workers, the Enviornment Agency and Cleaner Bentham. 

Part 1 and Part 2 of the BBC Morning Live program can be seen here. 
Channel 4's news report.

The information given by Angus's before the meeting was not quite clear as there was no update on their www.derbs.co.uk communication website. The Chair of the meeting was also "not aware of why they were not present" until the end of the night during audience questions.

A N Other
wrote
Wednesday, June 18, 2025
Angus did not attend as they felt it would distract from the purpose of the meeting, which was for the agencies and regulatory bodies involved in the investigations and monitoring to introduce themselves and the actions they have taken and will continue to take. <br /><br />This was explained at the opening of the meeting by the chair. <br /><br />What also became clear was that Angus has, and continues to, shared data from the sampling programmes with the appropriate bodies. <br />The sampling is carried out by an independent consultancy company (Rambo) and this is one of only two companies in the UK which are appropriate for this work (as confirmed by the representative from the Enviornment Agency). <br /><br />This data, along with data from Yorkshire water, has confirmed that there is no PFAS pollution present in the public or private water supplies in the village, including the caravan site and golf club (the only registered private water supplies in the village). <br /><br />Angus continues to monitor and continues to share data with the EA, Yorkshire Water and appropriate regulators. <br /><br />What also became clear, and was subsequently commented on by the lawyer from Leigh Day who attended, is that there are thousands of sites with elevated PFAS across the UK. More will likely be found as and when testing expands. It is ‘ubiquitous’ to use the words of the scientific officer from the council and the EA representative.
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