A criminal investigation has been launched into how a major NHS supplier employed by dozens of hospital trusts retained body parts including amputated limbs and waste from cancer treatment.

The Environment Agency said Healthcare Environmental Services (HES) had breached its permits at five sites in England that deal with clinical waste.

“We are taking enforcement action against the operator, which includes clearance of the excess waste, and have launched a criminal investigation,” the EA said.

“We are supporting the government and the NHS to ensure there is no disruption to public services and for alternative plans to be put in place for hospitals affected to dispose of their waste safely.”

With pressure building on the government, the Labour MP Yvette Cooper asked why parliament had not been told that the health secretary, Matt Hancock, chaired a Cobra committee meeting last month amid concern about a potential health hazard over the firm’s failure to get rid of the waste.

NHS England documents obtained by the Health Service Journal (HSJ) show that large amounts of various forms of human waste, including amputated limbs, infectious liquids, cytotoxic waste produced during cancer treatment and dangerous pharmaceutical waste, built up at HES disposal sites.

Q&A What is Healthcare Environmental Services? Show HES is run by a husband and wife who have paid themselves almost £1m in dividends over the past two years despite the company losing around £1.7m. The company collected £31m last year in payments from its contracts with mostly NHS hospitals to collect and dispose of body parts and medical waste. Garry Pettigrew, who has run the company for 21 years, and his wife, Alison, collected £480,000 in dividend payments in the 2016-17 financial year (the latest one available), according to filings at Companies House. The couple also paid themselves £480,000 in dividends in 2015-16. The payments were made despite the company making a pre-tax profit of just £30,000 in 2016-17 and a loss of £1.7m in 2015-16. The couple were also paid salaries totalling £297,000 last year and they charged the company expenses of £170,000. The accounts reveal the couple are loaning the firm £500,000 a year at a rate of 8.5%, far above the Bank of England base rate of 0.75%. They earn £29,000 a year from the loan.



The HSJ website said: “This anatomical waste, which is made up of human body parts and surgical waste, has now been placed in fridges. HES is also attempting to export 750 tonnes of pharmaceutical waste to Holland.”

The affected sites included a plant at Normanton – in Cooper’s constituency of Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford – where the waste was reported to have been five times more than HES’s permitted level.

Cooper told BBC’s Today programme: “It is very concerning for the local community, who still don’t have the basic facts. We want to know the public health implications of going over them [the limits] like this.

“This was serious enough to have a criminal investigation and serious enough to go to a Cobra meeting, and yet there was no statement to parliament or to the local community.”

Cooper asked if the problem was a much wider one involving the national waste strategy, or an issue around the monitoring of companies involved.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said there was “absolutely no risk” to public health.

Hancock has made £1m available to help the trusts affected by the problems related to the build-up, which has led to the EA taking enforcement action against HES 15 times.

HES said: “Healthcare Environmental has highlighted the reduction in the UK’s high-temperature incineration capacity for the last few years. This is down to the ageing infrastructure, prolonged breakdowns and the reliance on zero-waste-to-landfill policies, taking up the limited high-temperature incineration capacity in the market.”

A government spokesman said: “We are monitoring the situation closely and have made sure that public services – including NHS trusts – have contingency plans in place. There is absolutely no risk to the health of patients or the wider public.

“Our priority is to prevent disruption to the NHS and other vital public services and work is under way to ensure organisations can continue to dispose of their waste safely and efficiently.”