Inspecting contaminated land
The statutory guidance sets out how the council should achieve the requirement to cause its area to be inspected from time to time for the purpose of identifying contaminated land.
This involved the publication of an inspection strategy, which this authority published in September 2002.
The council’s Contaminated Land Inspection Strategy takes a strategic approach to the identification of land, which merits detailed inspection. The approach is designed to be
- Rational ordered and efficient
- Proportionate to the seriousness of any actual or potential risk
- Seek to ensure the most pressing and serious problems are located first
- Concentrate resources on investigating areas where the authority is most likely to identify contaminated land; and
- Efficiently identify requirements for the detailed inspection of particular areas of land.
The approach can be summarised with these steps:
- To gather information about land within the whole borough. See information on the Land Quality database.
- To identify sites that may require further investigation
- To prioritise these sites so that the resources are targeted to the most serious sites first. See the Prioritising land for individual site inspection page.
- To carry out inspections of individual sites.
- Facilitating remediation where it is required.
Last updated : 01/06/2009
