Controversy
The chain is owned by local businessman Bruce Robertson, son of founder Mike Robertson. He is a supporter of United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), famously refusing to stop using imperial measures in his stores despite contravening European Union law. Despite his opposition to immigration from countries in Eastern Europe, Robertson was revealed in January 2007 to be employing around 30 migrants from Poland in his Newton Abbot store.
In September 2011, the company was fined £199,588 after admitting five breaches of the Environmental Protection Act. This followed the discovery of "several thousand tonnes" of dumped waste, including asbestos, at its Newton Abbot and Liskeard sites. The fine was reduced to £65,000 in January 2012 after an Exeter Crown Court judge accepted that Trago Mills had paid nearly £500,000 in clean-up costs.
Read more about this topic: Trago Mills
Famous quotes containing the word controversy:
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)