A builder who toured the country conning customers over the disposal of harmful asbestos has been ordered to pay more than £80,000.

Lee Charles told people – including one in north Kent – he was authorised to take the waste away when he was not and used fake paperwork to win them over.

He charged the Gravesend homeowner £1,000 to dismantle a garage, then took the debris and asbestos to his yard 150 miles away in Lincolnshire.

The 40-year-old used the company name Lincs Demolition Ltd for two years and having duped customers, stashed the asbestos in storage containers 200m from a school.

Charles told the owners of the storage space he wanted to keep tools there but when he failed to pay rent, they forced the locks and found the dangerous contents.

Once exposed, he moved to an unpermitted waste site, near Sleaford, and continued to store asbestos unsafely.

In March last year, Charles, of Caldicot Gardens, in Grantham, was convicted by Lincoln Crown Court after pleading guilty to two counts of operating a waste operation without a permit between 2017 and 2019.

He also admitted two counts of keeping or disposing of controlled waste in a manner likely to cause pollution or harm.

On Monday (May 22), the court ordered Charles to pay £82,100 following an Environment Agency investigation into the costs he avoided while working illegally.

Paul Salter, an environmental waste crime officer for the Environment Agency, said: “Lee Charles’ crimes were not just illegal, but dangerous. He has been ordered to pay back money, and this sends out a clear message to others who flout the law that waste crime does not pay.

“Not only do we use environmental law to prosecute offenders, but we also use proceeds of crime orders to ensure that criminals are deprived of the benefits of their illegal activity.

“The Environment Agency supports legitimate businesses by disrupting and stopping the criminal element, backed up by the threat of tough enforcement as in this case.

“We continue to use intelligence-led approaches to target the most serious crimes and evaluate which interventions are most effective.”

Asbestos was banned in the UK in 1999 and is a hazardous substance when disturbed and carcinogenic.

In 2015, illegal waste activity was estimated to cost more than £600 million in England alone.