‘We feel vindicated’: life by a landfill after vital high court ruling

People living amid toxic fumes hope ruling will force Walleys Quarry to make urgent changes

When she returned to her home in the village of Knutton, outside Newcastle-under-Lyme, after a trip to London on Thursday, the landfill fumes hit Helen Vincent like a brick wall. We were saying to each other: Oh how nice was the fresh air in London?' You won't hear many people say that," she laughed.

Vincent had been in London for a landmark high court ruling which ordered the Environment Agency to do more to protect five-year-old Mathew Richards from the landfill's hydrogen sulphide fumes, which doctors said were shortening his life expectancy.