Get the stories that matter to you sent straight to your inbox with our daily newsletter. Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

A hospital has been forced onto high alert after a mountain of tyres has built up just feet away.

As many as 60,000 old tyres are stacked 10 feet high in a yard and filling a warehouse to its roof.

Such is the threat a malicious fire would cause, that East Ayrshire Community Hospital is taking precautions.

The 500 ton pile of worn rubber has been built up by Stevie Gillies.

But the Monkton-based businessman insists new environmental rules have left him treading water.

Speaking for the first time he said: “My hands are completely tied. The Scottish Environmental Protection Agency has me over a barrel.”

His firm has spent months gathering up waste tyres from garages and fast fit centres across the country - and dumped them in piles across his yard off Ayr Road and very close to the area hospital.

The tyre mountain is now visible from the Cumnock bypass as well as the hospital.

Gillies, 42, and his wife Wendy, 45, have been involved in a number of tyre waste businesses, one based in Ayr.

He rents two units in Cumnock. One remains empty and the larger warehouse “filled to the roof” with tyres.

One local worker said: “The landlord is furious and the hospital is on alert as they fear the place could go up in smoke. The word is the hospital has had to dedicate staff to it.

“The owner of the yard is freaking out as nobody will rent his other property because of this.

“SEPA is constantly checking the site and the council is monitoring it via a mobile CCTV camera.”Dr Elvira Garcia, Ayrshire’s Consultant in Public Health Medicine, is aware of the tyre threat.

(Image: Google Maps)

She said: “We are in discussion with the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA), East Ayrshire Council and the emergency services to ensure the appropriate measures are taken.

“Patient safety is our top priority, and we have robust plans in place which will be implemented immediately in the event of an emergency situation.”

But Stevie claims the problem lies with SEPA who “changed the goalposts” on licensing requirements. And he says his previously lucrative tyre recycling business has been killed.

He said: “I have worked at the yard for two years without anyone being aware of what we did. It is only now that everyone is seeing the tyres that I am getting grief.

“We are in the process of trying to get them removed but nowhere in Scotland can take them.

“SEPA has basically shut everybody down after the law was changed last March so I have had to stockpile them.

“The only solution is to transport them to England but the price is too high and SEPA has a court order to take over my bank account.”

He said he had invested £50,000 in a tyre bailer to turn them into solid blocks which could be used in roads and flood prevention before they were outlawed in Scotland. He added: “They are now illegal in Scotland but not in England so I really don’t know what the difference is.

“With my bank account frozen I am between a rock and a hard place as I cannot afford to send the tyres down south.

“When I got into this in the first place I was offering a service that was re-using what was waste and transforming it into a useful product. Now that has been taken away from me.”

A solution, he said, could be found within the next month, and he vowed: “I am not running away from this - but I need SEPA’s permission to do anything.”

SEPA said the only change to waste management licensing in the last six years took place in March 2016.

That removed “exemptions” which allowed operators to pile up to 1000 tyres without a licence.

Kenny Boag, SEPA’s head of operations for the west, said: “The site and its operator are the focus of an ongoing investigation and SEPA officers have been proactively engaging with the operator, Autowaste Services Scotland, in order to have the tyres removed and disposed of correctly.

“SEPA has also been working with partner organisations, including the local authority, Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and local Health Board, to assess and reduce the potential impact of the site on the local community while seeking the removal of tyres from the site.”