Delivering decontaminated land to housing: A case study

Summary

In 2017, Fife Council in partnership with Robertson Partnership Homes delivered one of their largest social housing projects providing 101 high quality homes for rent. The 5.6-hectare development took place in Methil Brae, a derelict brownfield site and former iron foundry.

The site was successfully remediated and redeveloped by the council’s Affordable Housing team to provide much needed accommodation in an area ranked highly for multiple deprivation. The scheme was instrumental in helping to meet Scottish Government targets to deliver 50,000 affordable homes by 2021 as well as meeting the much-needed local housing requirements. Overall, the scheme created 2,700 new homes, providing a mixture of housing options for members of the community. The development took two years to complete.

Introduction

Fife, like all councils, has a legal duty to inspect, identify and remediate contaminated land under the Environmental Act 1990. So how does this work in Fife?

The first stage was to identify potentially contaminated sites. The Council worked alongside professional environmental consultants and consults with a number of partners including the Scottish Environment Protection Agency for water pollution and radioactive pollutants, Scottish Natural Heritage, British Geological Survey for borehole information, the Coal Authority in relation to mining, Health & Safety Executive for asbestos guidance, Historic Environment Scotland in relation to the historic built environment and the National Library of Scotland for historical maps and other archives.

Coupling independent expertise with knowledge of the local area, several thousand former industrial sites across Fife have been identified using a number of channels including historical Ordnance Survey maps; aerial photography (historic and recent); Landmark Historic Land Use data; council records; libraries and archives. Partnership working is an essential component of successfully identifying contaminated lands, as often information about these for industrial sites are not available digitally, so councils are reliant on archives and local knowledge.

Project

Once potentially contaminated sites are identified, Fife’s Land & Air Quality team assesses these sites, prioritising the most polluting land uses first, to make sure the sites are suited to what they’re now being used for.

Then a phased approach followed:

1. Desk study: the risk of contamination is assessed based on what the site was used for, where it is and what was found when the team visited it. These sites are ranked on a scale of 1 to 4, with 1 being high priority and 4 being near-zero risk. If there’s a possibility of an unacceptable risk, the next phase of more intrusive investigations begins.
2. Intrusive investigation: This may involve taking samples of soil, and water (on and below ground), and checking for gases and vapours. This can involve digging pits, boring holes and installing monitoring equipment. This part of the investigation is to determine whether work is needed to clean up the land and what this is likely to involve.

One challenge at this stage is the cost. Intrusive site investigations and subsequent remediation projects are costly which proves a challenge with limited budgets and can constrain the speed at which sites can be remediated which has potential public health consequences.

To mitigate this, Land & Air Quality Team undertakes its own intrusive investigative work in-house. This saves up to 75% of costs and provides more confidence in the outcome of the work. This also gives the Council more credibility as regulators when reviewing consultant’s reports submitted in support of planning applications.

“Where there is considered to be significant risk to public health, the Council acts to secure funding for voluntary remedial action to ensure risks are mitigated in a timely fashion without causing undue hardship. (Experience and case law suggest that attempting to pursue the original polluter or knowing permitter has always either failed or resulted in costs coming back to the local authority.)” (Inspection Strategy 2019)

3. Remediation works: Remediation means the actions (such as reducing, isolating or removing the contamination) needed to make a site safe for what it’s being used for. For each site, a report is produced showing what steps need to be taken. Then the work will be carried out.
4. Verification: When the remediation work is complete a Verification Report confirms that the site is suitable for its current use. Once the Verification report confirms that the site is suitable for its current use the process is complete.

This is a similar process for developers wanting to build on contaminated brownfield sites as encouraged by Scottish Government.

Fife’s Land & Air Quality team works closely with Development Management, Building Standards, Local Plan, Economic Development and Vacant & Derelict Land teams and advises the Council’s planning department to ensure the developer is meeting their responsibility of remediating contaminated sites.

They have provided planning and building control departments with a GIS ‘constraint layer’ on their mapping system to help screen proposed developments efficiently, reducing the risk of inadvertently creating future problems with contaminated land.

Fife’s Land and Air Quality team have produced a guidance booklet for developers: ‘Advice for developing brownfield sites in Fife‘ which outlines the minimum requirements for investigation reports. These requirements differ depending on the sensitivity of the site, for example a housing development is a more sensitive use of site than a retail development. The Council withholds planning permission until the Verification report has been received confirming that the site is fit for purpose.

Comment

Fife’s Land & Air Quality team produced their first land strategy in 2001 and the processes it has established to identify, inspect and remediate contaminated sites has been very successful; there are currently no contaminated lands listed on Fife Council’s Public Contaminated Land Register. Fife’s Inspection Strategy not only fulfils the statutory duty on the Council to inspect Fife for historical contamination, it also “seeks to complement and enhance Fife Council’s wider policies aimed at regeneration and sustainability for people who live in, work in, or choose to visit, Fife.” (Inspection Strategy 2019)

Their work has enabled sites like Methil Brae to be developed to provide thousands of residents a home. This case study exemplifies the potential brownfield and contaminated lands have and the importance of remediation in helping to meet the increasing demand for housing provisions and reducing public health and environmental risks associated with these contaminated sites.