Why is my area being listed for investigation by the Council?

In this borough there are currently approximately 270 sites of potentially contaminated land that have been identified for inspection due to their potentially contaminative history e.g. former landfill pits or factory buildings.
Each site has been prioritised for inspection and ranked in order of its perceived potential harm. For example, a former excavation pit, with current residential garden use, has been prioritised higher than a piece of open land thought once to be a pond with no permanent residential use.

All Local Authorities in England are prioritising and investigating sites in a similar manner. For further details of this process, please refer to the Council’s Contaminated Land Inspection Strategy.

When I bought the property, there was no mention of any Contaminated Land issues, why was I not informed before purchasing?

The law relating to contaminated land (Part IIA of the Environmental Protection Act 1990) came into effect on 1 April 2000. The regulations introduced new legislation detailing a regulatory regime specifically for the regulation of land quality to be enforced by Local Authorities and the Environment Agency.

If you acquired your property before this time, it is unlikely that Environmental Searches carried out by your Solicitor would have included this aspect.

In July 2001 a Law Society Warning card was issued by the Law Society to all Solicitors in England, setting out the action they should take in all conveyancing transactions to highlight contaminated land issues to clients. If any potential contamination issues were not highlighted during your conveyancing process or the results of an environmental search were not brought to your attention, you may wish to contact your solicitor.

Do areas of land which are identified by the council for investigation appear on any environmental searches?

Independent environmental searches use sources such as historical mapping and trade directories but do not contact the council for information on the sites that we have identified as potentially contaminated land sites. They will, however, list any sites which have been designated as statutory Contaminated Land on the Local Authority Contaminated Land Register.

Independent environmental searches will often highlight areas that have in the past been used for potentially contaminative uses, without assessing the risk to human health or the environment.

Is it true that some homeowners have had to pay for environmental investigations to take place at their property?

The council will fund the investigation of all sites on their prioritised list, in order of risk prioritisation. However the investigation of lower prioritised areas may not be scheduled to take place for some years. If the homeowner is having difficulty selling a property due to the uncertainty caused by a lack of investigation to date, a homeowner may wish to instruct an independent investigation. This can this can be used to answer uncertainty, and provide definite information for any potential buyers. It is recommended that this process be regulated by the Contaminated Land Officer to ensure adequate investigations are undertaken. We would advise that quotes are requested from at least three different companies, to ensure adequate results are obtained to specification.

My neighbour has had a private investigation carried out; can I use their results to indicate contamination at my property?

No. Private investigations are for specific areas of land and the results obtained are interpreted for that site only. For example, activities in the past such as waste disposal may lead to concentrations of contaminants that differ greatly from metre to metre.

I have received notification of the Council’s intention to investigate my property; why has my neighbour not been contacted?

The boundaries of investigation areas are largely based on historical features, so it may be that your property is inside our investigation range and your neighbour's property is not.

What does an intrusive investigation involve?

Sampling is normally undertaken using handheld machinery to extract a core of soil from an area. The core is normally approximately 6cm in diameter, and the void left behind can either be backfilled with soil or sealed to enable monitoring of gas and groundwater conditions on later occasions.

Why can’t the whole investigation be done as one, instead of in Phases which seems to make the process lengthy?

To follow statutory guidance the Council must undertake investigations in a phased approach. The council can only investigate areas intrusively where there is a reasonable possibility that a pollutant linkage exists. Due to controls on funding and resources, if after the first intrusive stage (Phase I) no pollutant linkages are identified, intrusive investigations will cease. It is only if pollutant linkages are deemed likely that further, more expensive, phases of intrusive investigation will be carried out. So although it would be quicker to do an extensive investigation initially it would be very costly and may turn out to have been unnecessary.

Is it safe for my children to use the garden? Can I grow vegetables in my garden?

The results of investigations are closely analysed by expert consultants. If any of the samples analysed return levels of contaminants that are seen to be acutely harmful to any receptors including any living creatures in the short term, we would notify the land users.

How do I request information?

The Environmental Information Regulations 2005 (EIR) give members of the public access to environmental information held by public authorities. Under EIR, authorities are not permitted to charge for access to public registers, or examination of environmental information. Where the council receive a request in writing to provide detailed information on a site a charge of £170 will be made for this service. However if the work involved in responding to the enquiry is not insubstantial, an hourly rate of £52 will be made at the discretion of the Officer.

If my property is found, through investigation, to be statutorily contaminated land, what will that mean?

If, through investigation, substances in, on or under the land are found to pose a ‘significant possibility of significant harm’, or ‘pollution of controlled waters’ (surface water features or groundwater), remediation will be required to restore the area to its required use.
Remediation can include actions such as the removal or treatment of topsoil or changing the nature of a garden to prevent uptake of contamination by receptors.
If remediation is enforced, the area of land affected by the contaminants identified will be placed on the Local Authority Public Register.

Who will pay for this remediation?

The ‘appropriate person’ pays for remediation. Appropriate people can be classified as Class A and Class B persons. Class A persons are those people that may have caused the contamination or those that have knowingly permitted a pollutant to be in, or under the land (e.g. developers). If these people cannot be located then responsibility may default to a Class B person who may be the current resident or landowner.

Where can I get further details about how contaminated land is investigated by the Local Authority?

The Council's Contaminated Land Strategy

ContaminatedLandStrategyApril2006.pdf

The defra (Department for environment food and rural affairs) web pages on Contaminated Land

The EA (Environment Agency) web pages on Contaminated Land