Contaminated Land

[Tchuka27]

Advice sought - I am buying a newly built flat on a brownfield site near a river. I have looked at flood risk via the EA website and checked the Flood Risk Assessment prepared for the planning application. The flood risk is 'low' and safe for occupants apparently. The FRA mentions contaminants found in the site - phenols/arsenic. I have asked the planning authority to set out how conditions relating to decontamination have been executed. I am not sure what else to check and what the risks really are.
Has anyone had experience of this kind of thing and of flood risk? Must be more of an issue these days as more brownfield sites are re-developed for housing.

If you've read the flood risk report and are happy with it, you could also speak to neighbouring properties to see if there has ever been any flooding in the area. Also check the city plan to see what is proposed for the area in the long term and the corresponding flood impact assessment.
Regarding contaminated land, the original planning application should have a remediation strategy. You can cross-reference it with reports from SEPA or whichever body was responsible for monitoring the remediation work.

Have you actually had a proper Environmental Search done via your solicitors? If it fails, you won't be able to get a mortgage; why don't you check as a matter of priority? The developer can clean up and certify remediation but the best way to find out the facts as they stand is to get a search done.

This is definitely one for your solicitors and surveyors. You need to pay for this information so that you can make an informed decision, and in the event that something goes wrong you can sue on their professional indemnity.

Hi Tchuka,
I wanted to draw your attention to this website, Truth About Zane. Zane was a little boy who died during the flooding in Surrey in February 2014. He died in his sleep, the family's home had been flooded and the floodwaters had passed through contaminated land. It's been one year and his death certificate has still not been issued. His father is confined to a wheelchair, and traces of hydrogen cyanide were found in the bloodstreams of the whole family. It has been utter anguish for his parents and they are campaigning to find the truth about how the gas could have ended up in their property.

Thank you so much for the responses.
I have reviewed the planning documents which are part of the planning permission decision and have obtained and read the flood risk assessment. The risk is 'low' and I am OK with that. The solicitors are in the process of conducting their searches and I have asked for a flood search as well as the environmental search.
My concern is really that the developers will have done searches already and the lawyers will just accept these verbatim. Plus the slow/minimal response from the planning dept re my queries about how the land was cleaned up.
Very aware too of the combined flood/contamination risk. I read about Zane a few weeks ago and it's shocking particularly as there is no accepted, definitive conclusion regarding the causes and a seeming reluctance from the authorties to fully engage with investigations which followed.
I plan to wait for the outcome of the searches but I wanted to be sure I had assembled all the facts.
Keen to hear from anyone who went through this process or something similar already. There are some unknowables so I guess its a matter of living with the risk as you perceive it or just not going ahead.
My thanks again.

I work for a developer and normally it's quite a rigorous and very expensive works to remediate contaminated land. Normally the contaminated ground is removed or capped over. I still would be very cautious on buying a property which flags up contamination issues especially with children etc, also if you have concerns, would it put people buying the home in the future?

Shabby, is the remediation work always done now? I.e. Is it illegal for a developer not to clean it up before building?

Shabby - thanks for your insight. Can you elaborate on reasons to be concerned even if remediation conditions in the planning decision are all discharged? This must be a common set of circumstances these days with pressure on space and high rewards from house building.

All remediation works will have to be done before works are started. All I would be concerned is inspection will only be a snapshot of the whole area and once again samples will also be taken from very small areas, so there is a chance things can be missed. Also as I said things can be covered over with a certain amount of clean material which is perfectly fine now, but obviously the material is still there and who knows what could happen in the future, ie ground water levels could rise bringing whatever is below up to the surface

OK. So even where there is a clean bill of health there is still a risk of undetected contamination and that risk could be increased by another risk factor such as flooding or ground water levels rising?
It seems to boil down to whether or not one thinks the risks however much they have been mitigated are acceptable. There just does not seem to be a way of quantifying this.
Does this happen a lot?
And thanks again for all contributions. I am on a tight budget but don't want to put my children at unnecessary risk.

why are you buying it if its on floodland and contaminated? Cant you back out/?

No contract is signed. It's a shared ownership development mixed with 40 private houses all 500k plus. It's a good location for me but inhave concerns as stated above and limited alternative s

Building on contaminated land that has been remediated does happen a lot. Arguably the controls concerning building on formerly contaminated land are stricter now than they've ever been. LAs always ask for SIs now and planning is dependent on remediation and detailed development plans. Most major cities that had an industrial past, will have buildings/homes built on land that was contaminated.

Your lawyers will probably do desk searches which won't answer the questions you have.

It really is a decision you have to make yourself.

No-one can guarantee that there won't be flooding or that the water table won't change. Equally no-one can guarantee that the SI is completely comprehensive.

There are lots of people who buy properties on formerly contaminated land. The paper trail for the remediation work means it is no longer classed as contaminated and it's easy to get a mortgage. Likewise I know both property developers and home-buyers who have walked away from properties and sites in those situations.

so many new developments round here are built on flood plains. I dont know how they get away with it

The paper trail for the remediation work means it is no longer classed as contaminated

This seems not to be quite so straightforward for the 10-year-old property we're currently in the process of buying. Reputable builder, NHBC has just run out. The environmental search has just failed due to the property having been built within 25 metres of what was once a factory site, and we are just hoping the seller comes back to us with evidence that the remediation was done, or that the expired NHBC explicitly includes this information.

If the evidence doesn't exist, our very mainstream mortgage lender won't lend to us.

Now that the Conservatives want 200,000 houses to be built each year, there will be more contaminated sites which will have to be used, as will greenfield and even green belt. There are plenty of experts who work very hard to ensure sites are safe. DH does this work all the time. No-one forces anyone to buy a house on a site they are not happy with. There are so many objections to new housing proposals I do wonder how any Party can say they want such a high target when it takes so long to get PP. The cost of cleaning up contaminated land is huge so the developer needs to get this back when selling the houses. If there have to be a huge number of starter homes, this money is difficult to get back without the prices going up.

we pulled out of a sale where the house was flagged up on contaminated land
we had small children ,who would be almost certainly playing in the garden,and i wouldnt want to grown veg in it.

Tricky subject. Interesting to hear from anyone who has bought a property on a remediated site and they satisfied themselves that any risk was mitigated.

PiratePanda sorry to hear that but if the work has been done then the paperwork you are looking for will exist and your mortgage will be approved. For example, there is a large scale new development in our city, built on previously contaminated land, numerous lenders have given mortgages. If the paperwork isn't correct then no-one will give a mortgage but I was referring to properties where it has been remediated. The entire point of remediation is to ensure both that properties are as safe as can be, and that house-builders can secure a return on their investment.

Tchuka I understand your concerns. Your solicitor can complete their due diligence regarding the paperwork but ultimately it is only a decision you can make.

I have friends who have recently purchased a new property on a previously contaminated site adjacent to a river with low risk of flooding. They are happy with the flood risk report and that the remediation has been completed. I have other friends who nearly bought a house in the exact same development but decided at the last minute not to go through with it. They all had access to the exact same paperwork. For one of them that paperwork trail was enough. For the other, it wasn't. In both cases, their solicitors and banks were happy for the purchases to go ahead.

However the friends who walked away still had concerns that if water levels changed then the water table could be affected by the past contamination. No-one can ever 100% guarantee that won't happen especially if a capping remediation strategy has been used.

As a PP said, the current policy to bring brownfield sites back into use means this is a going to be a growing issue and there is definitely a question about whether this push is favouring economic viability over public health concerns. Personally, working in this area, there are some remediated sites where I would purchase a property. There are others that I wouldn't ever consider. The difference being the initial levels of contamination, the type of contaminants and the remediation strategies adopted.

If you want to do more reading on this then there is a searchable database online that covers certain areas and sites, where you can access SI reports and borehole reports. iirc it's optional rather than compulsory so is by no means extensive. It's the British Geological Survey.

There has been a big push to use brownfield sites over greenfield and green belt. The cost of cleaning up some sites is immense. If developers have to pay for all of this, house prices become too high, so instead the developers keep the sites in their land banks until they can make a profit. Public money does not, as far as I am aware, get used for cleaning up these sites.

The government now want to release developers from making contributions to health centres, schools etc, so maybe that will help with contaminated land costs. However, it won't help with families getting school places or doctor's waiting times.

We could build more on greenfield sites and release green belt. At the moment developing the green belt is very contentious but if we don't like brownfield sites because we don't trust the clean up work, then where shall we build homes and keep costs reasonable? No-one wants new housing near them, no-one likes brownfield sites, everyone worries about flooding and everyone wants the green belt and greenfield sites to remain as "green". I guess we will continue to pay more for housing because there is not enough of it! Start saving!

Public money does not, as far as I am aware, get used for cleaning up these sites.
Sometimes it does. Public money is used to remediate the sites and then they are sold to the private sector on the condition that the final development includes a percentage of affordable housing.

It's naive to think existing housing wasn't built on contaminated land or that greenbelt doesn't include contaminated land. Greenbelt sites have in the past been re-zoned from brownfield.

We have a brownfield site near us, adjacent to the river, and the developer is proposing to build on a part of the site that local people know floods about once every 10-12 years. They are however insisting they can because it's shown on the Environment Agency plans as Flood Zone 2 - (1% chance of flooding). We have photos of the whole area under water last winter, which when the planning application goes in we will use to try stop them building on that particular area of the site.

So I wouldn't rely on the Environment Agency flood assessment, but would instead go and visit the area and ask around, as local people will know, as once you've been flooded it can be very expensive to get insurance.

The site near us is contaminated too - with arsenic and asbestos, and they plan remediation works, which I think and hope will be looked at carefully by the Council.