Content

13.1.1

Part 2A of the Environmental Protection Act
1990 deals with the identification, prioritisation, determination,
and remediation of contaminated land. The legislation places a
statutory duty on local authorities to inspect their area for the
purpose of identifying potentially contaminated sites and for the
further inspection of such sites.

 

 

13.1.2

Under statutory guidance local
authorities should take a strategic approach to the
identification of land which
merits detailed individual inspection. The guidance
confirms that local authorities
should keep their strategies under periodic review to
ensure it remains up to
date

 

 

13.1.3

Members of the committee
considered a report of the Executive Director Neighbourhood
Services seeking approval of an updated Contaminated Land
Inspection Strategy, in line with updated guidance and current
working practice.

 

 

13.2

RESOLVED
UNANIMOUSLY: That the Waste and Street
Scene Policy Committee approves the Contaminated Land Inspection
Strategy. This is to ensure compliance with the Council’s
statutory requirements set out under guidance.

 

 

13.3

Reasons for Decision

 

 

13.3.1

SCC has not updated its
contaminated Land Strategy since 2013. The 2013 Land Quality
Strategy references outdated and withdrawn guidance, and the
technical background in the 2013 report duplicates information from
the published guidance and is not written in accessible plain
English.

 

 

13.3.2

The updated 2025 Contaminated
Land Strategy set out in Appendix A has been renamed to make it
easier to find for land contamination professionals and land
conveyancers, it has been rewritten to reference current guidance
and, in order to simplify the document,
has summarised rather than duplicated the information from that
guidance.

 

 

13.3.3

This updated report is required
by the Statutory Guidance.

 

 

13.4

Alternatives Considered and Rejected

 

 

13.4.1

Alternative Option
1:
 
Amending the Inspection
Strategy to change SCC’s approach from passive inspection and
move to a programme of proactive inspection of land.

·      
Currently, SCC passively inspect land via the
Planning process, and active investigations of Contaminated land
are based on emergent needs, reactive to new situations where
potential risk is identified.

·      
Given budget pressures, it seems unlikely that SCC
would be able to transition to a proactive approach in the
foreseeable future, given that a reactive/monitoring approach is
acceptable under the Statutory Guidance,
and given the lack of available funding from central
government.

·      
Regardless of funding pressures, before proactive
inspections can be undertaken, land is required to be prioritised
before this can take place. Prioritisation of land is in progress
and is included within the current revision of the Strategy. This
work is estimated to take years at the current resource
availability.

·      
Other councils which proactively investigate land
have dedicated Contaminated Land teams which are internally funded.
This is not currently possible at SCC.

·      
This option was therefore rejected at this time,
although future revisions of the Contaminated Land Inspection
Strategy may include proactive inspection of land.

 

 

13.4.2

Alternative Option 2:
 
Do Nothing and keep the current 2013 revision
of the Land Quality Strategy. This option was rejected, as the
Statutory Guidance recommends that this document is updated every 5
years and therefore the revision is already overdue