A BUSINESSMAN who recently bought part of the disused Throckmorton airfield has been fined £16,000 for using a builder’s yard as a site for selling and renting commercial vehicles.

John Bruce used the rural site at Crabbe Yard, Crabbe Lane, Wadborough, Pershore, for storing more than 200 vehicles, Worcester Crown Court was told.

Timothy Compton, prosecuting, said the site had a “long and turbulent” planning history.

Its accepted use was as a builder’s yard but, following a complaint, development control officers from Wychavon District Council visited in 2010.

They took pictures of more than 200 lorries, caravans and general plant equipment, and Bruce, of Wadborough Hall Farm, near Pershore, was told to stop using the site as a base for the vehicles and equipment he advertised in trade magazines and on a website.

At the start of this year, Bruce was given 14 days to comply but he ignored the notice.

Mr Compton said Bruce had previously been given a jail sentence for environmental offences involving illegally dumping waste.

Elizabeth Power, defending, said Bruce had admitted misuse of the one-acre Crabbe Yard site, which also has a workshop and offices, in a meeting with council officers earlier this year and in the magistrates court.

She said some of the photographs taken actually related to other sites which the 38-year-old used for storing equipment and he had just bought part of the old airfield at Throckmorton, near Pershore, for £795,000 which he also intended to use.

It was sold by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), which bought the land during the foot and mouth crisis in 2001, although that particular part of it was never used to bury carcasses.

Miss Power said Bruce employed 30 people but the construction and demolition side of his business interests had been hit by the recession.

His salary costs worked out at £25,000 a month and he paid himself £1,500 a month, she said.

Recorder Martin Jackson said Bruce, who was banned from being a company director for 10 years in 2002, had run a business for profit at the site from the start of 2010 with commercial vehicles selling for £20,000 and £30,000 each.

“You have a track record of misusing land and ignoring the authorities,” he told Bruce.

He also said he suspected Bruce’s income was “very much greater than he has declared” if he could buy an airfield site for £795,000 with a mortgage of £500,000.

A proceeds of crime hearing has been set for February next year.

Bruce was given 12 months to pay the £16,000 fine.