Land contamination

Contaminated land is land which has substances that can cause major harm or is likely to cause significant pollution to controlled waters.

To meet the definition of contaminated land, it must involve the following:

contaminant
pathway
receptor.

Environmental search

To find out whether a piece of land might be affected by contamination, you can request us to carry out an Environmental Search.

Request an environmental search

For questions such as historical land use, adjacent uses or previous investigations, then a £150 fee will need to be paid.

A fee does not need to be paid for requests that only ask whether a site has been highlighted for further investigation under Part II A of the Environmental Protection Act.

Please upload a site plan to confirm the extent of the land that you are asking about.

Our responsibilites

We are responsible for enforcing the contaminated land legislation.

Specialists within Health and Environmental Services act as advisers on land contamination issues. This includes:

supplying information
assessing if site investigations and remedial measures are completed properly.

Our duty

As part of our duties we will:

carry out inspections of all land within the district that may be contaminated
ensure that developed land is suitable for its use
keep a public register of designated contaminated land sites.

Our Public Register of the remediation of contaminated land is now available:

The public register does not include:

details of historic land use and other information used in the identification and investigation of potentially contaminated land
information on sites that have been remediated through the planning and development control process.