Contaminated land

The City of Plymouth has grown out of the 3 historic towns of Plymouth, Devonport and Stonehouse with early growth predominantly concentrated around the Dockyards. The city has a history of industrial development around the harbour areas of Sutton, Millbay, and Cattedown. This has included a number of gasworks, small chemical works, ship building and breaking and an electric power station.

What is the law relating to contaminated land?

Over the years the Council has been successful in cleaning up land by using existing powers under the Town and Country Planning and Pollution Control laws. The new contaminated land powers given to each Local Authority will allow the Council to make original polluters and land owners clean up land affected by historical pollution. The legislation is contained in Part IIA of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. The regime provides an improved system for the identification and clean up of contaminated land. These powers are very strict and the definition of contaminated land is set in the legislation. This legislation only applies to land that is causing unacceptable risks to human health or the wider environment and has the following three components.

• Source
• Pathway
• Receptor

Who will be affected?

Any person, organisation or business might be liable for clean up costs if it can be shown that they have caused or knowingly permitted the contamination, or if they own or occupy contaminated land where no polluter can be found.

What is contaminated land?

Under Part IIA the statutory definition of contaminated land is:

• land which appears to the Local Authority to be in such a condition, by reason of substances in, on or under the land that
  • significant harm is being caused or there is significant possibility of such harm being caused
  • pollution of controlled waters is being caused or is likely to be caused

To meet this definition there must therefore be the following components:

Source - a substance that is in, on or under the land and has the potential to harm humans or to cause pollution of controlled water

Pathway - the route by which a receptor is being or could be exposed to or affected by the source substance(s)

Receptor - can be any of the following; living organism; group of living organisms; ecological system; property; controlled waters

What will Plymouth City Council do as the regulators?

The Councils first task has been to produce a Contaminated Land Inspection Strategy. This document is available to view at the Libraries in the City and at First Stop in the Civic Centre. It sets out the Councils objectives, priorities and actions for dealing with contaminated land. It details where we are going to find information on contaminated land in the city and how we will research it.

The process

• Research historic land uses in the city and assess potential for contamination.
• Research current land uses in the city, watercourses, conservation sites, and geology.
• Establish list of sites where contamination may have occurred due to historic land use.
• Prioritise sites based on the principles of risk assessment. For example, we will target the sites where there is the greatest likelihood of damage/harm.
• We will approach previous and current landowners and occupiers of each site to inform them of our investigations.
• The Council will always encourage the clean up of contaminated land without using the new laws. Where this is not possible the Council will take legal action to make the polluters and landowners clean up the land.

The timetable

• The Council adopted the Contaminated Land Inspection Strategy in November 2001.
• The programme of research into the historic and current land uses in the city is expected to be completed by December 2002.
• The preliminary site inspections are expected to be completed by December 2002.
• The strategy will be reviewed during summer 2003 to ensure it still remains valid and to reflect sites that have been identified and cleaned up.

Update January 2003

The Inspection Strategy will be updated in the summer of this year. The programme of research has taken longer than previously expected and has not yet been completed. As a result we have not been able to prioritise sites and conduct preliminary inspections.

A large proportion of sites that may have fallen under the Part IIA regulations have been developed through the planning process. This has enabled us to ensure remediation of sites posing unacceptable risks for their proposed end-use.

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