What is Contamination and Contaminated Land?
Contaminated Land
What is Contamination and Contaminated Land?
The Environmental Protection Unit is responsible for dealing with many (but not all) of the 'contamination issues' for Tameside Borough.
Contamination is one or more substances (such as lead, metals, petrol, solvents, etc.) whose presence is resulting in, or may result in harm to the people, or the built and natural environments. 'Contamination issues' therefore covers a wide range of issues that relate to contamination/pollution of the built or rural environments. As a result several public and private organisations are responsible for dealing with contamination, which can be confusing.
Contaminated land is land that is affected by contaminants and has the potential to impact the human and natural environments. While contamination issues are dealt with by a wide range of legislation, the main piece of legislation available to the Council to deal with contaminated land issues is Part IIA of the Environmental Protection Act 1990.
This legislation provides the following statutory definition of contaminated land. Statutory guidance also clarifies this definition identifying the types of harm that will result in land being identified as contaminated land:
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"any land which appears to the local authority in whose area it is situated to be in such a condition, by reason of substances in, on or under the land, that:
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The Council’s Environmental Protection Unit is responsible for dealing with the following contamination.
- The Planning and Building Control process and the assessment of whether general contamination issues need to be addressed for proposed development.
- Contaminated land as defined by regulation (Part IIA of the Environmental Protection Act 1990). Further information on Contaminated Land and the Contaminated Land Regime.
- General contamination enquiries, where necessary liaising with other statutory bodies (such as the Environment Agency, English Nature, British Waterways, etc.).
- Environmental Searches providing details of information available within the Environmental Protection Unit of the Council.
Other contamination issues that are not dealt with by the Contaminated Land Service of the Council include Waste Management Licensing, Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control, Water Resources Act 1991, Radioactivity, Health and Safety, Food Safety, etc. The Useful Links page has more details.
If you are not sure who to contact in relation to a contaminated land issue, the Environmental Protection Unit should be able to point you in the right direction.