Land contamination

Making a planning application

Many LPAs offer a ‘pre- application enquiry service’ which enables a prospective developer to obtain guidance on the information, including land contamination reports (if necessary), which must be submitted with a formal planning application. You should contact your Local Planning Authority (LPA¹) for further information on this service. Please note, a charge may apply for this advice.

You can also request advice from the Environment Agency using their pre-planning application² service (preliminary opinion and/ or enhanced pre-application discussions). There is a charge for more detailed pre-application planning advice, such as reviews of technical reports. You can find out more about this service in the Environment Agency’s Planning and marine licence advice: standard terms for our charges³.

Regarding groundwater protection, if your site is located next to a river or in drinking water protected area then you will need to take this into consideration in your planning application and provide suitable mitigation. Further information can be found in the Environment Agency guidance Protect groundwater and prevent groundwater pollution⁴.

Your planning application should reflect the potential for contamination and the nature of the proposed development. You can provide this information in the ‘existing use’ section of your application. If you are aware of a potentially contaminative land use on, or formerly on, your planning site, you should always tick the required box(es). If the proposed use is one listed below, then the answer to the question “a proposed use that would be particularly vulnerable to the presence of contamination” should be ‘yes’:

• Houses/ flats with or without gardens
• Schools
• Nurseries/day care centres
• Hospitals
• Play areas
• Allotments
• Public open space and/or amenity

Where contamination is known and/or suspected to be present, or for sensitive proposed uses such as those listed above; a Tier 1 Preliminary risk assessment⁵ may be submitted with applications for outline or full planning permission, in line with the correctly completed application form.

A Tier 2 Generic Quantitative Risk Assessment⁶ report may also be required for submission with planning applications, depending on the nature of the site.

During the application process

The LPA may send your application and associated land contamination reports to appropriate statutory, non-statutory and internal consultees for technical consultation. This may include the Contaminated Land Officer (or equivalent) and the Environment Agency. 

The consultees carry out detailed independent review of submitted reports and recommend whether: they have no adverse comments; the submitted information addresses any concerns; a recommendation for planning conditions to be included on the decision notice; or refusal.

If the report is not deemed to be adequate, they may recommend refusal of the planning application.  In most situations, the LPA is likely to take the advice of their technical consultees in relation to land contamination issues.

Once your planning application has been approved

Once planning consent is granted, the LPA may include conditions on the planning decision notice.

Land contamination planning conditions may include requirements to submit the following information:

• A Tier 1 Preliminary risk assessment⁷; often including a desk study, site walkover, initial conceptual site model and any identified potential contaminant linkages.
• A Tier 2 Generic Quantitative Risk Assessment⁸; often including an intrusive site investigation, generic risk assessment (if appropriate), an assessment of identified contaminant linkages and a decision or recommendations of what further action is needed.
• A Ground Gas and/or Vapour Risk Assessment.
• A Coal Mine Gas Risk Assessment.
• An Options Appraisal⁹, Remediation Strategy and Verification Plan¹⁰ (along with proposed mitigation measures), sometimes including detailed monitoring plans and/or maintenance schemes¹¹.
• A methodology for quality control of soil or fill material that is site won, or to be imported. This may include details of any Material Management Plan¹² being utilised to facilitate materials management on site.
• Borehole protection and decommissioning management plan.
• A Verification Report¹³.
• Information concerning unexpected or previously unidentified contamination is encountered during development.

Some planning conditions require certain procedures, such as risk assessment or remediation, for example, to be undertaken prior to development commencing. These are referred to as pre-commencement conditions.

Discharge of Condition/Submission of details applications

When the reports required by conditions have been produced, you will need to submit another application for ‘discharge of condition’ and/or ‘submission of details’. There will be a fee associated with this application.  If you are applying for approval of a ‘pre-commencement’ condition, works must not start on site before the decision is issued by the LPA.

Some LPAs provide local guidance with specific requirements in their area about the different types of land contamination reports that should be submitted for sites where land contamination planning conditions have been applied to the decision notice. This may be in the form of ‘A Developer’s Guide’, a Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) and/or supplementary planning guidance. If they have local guidance or policies for dealing with land contamination on their website, you should follow this advice which will be specific to that LPA.

As the developer or planning agent, you must understand the requirements of any recommendations proposed to manage land contamination risks and embed them into the development process. If, for example, verification is required for the installation of gas protection measures in a building, then the verification procedures must be allowed for within the construction process. Missed opportunities to follow approved verification procedures and collect data can prohibit discharge of the relevant conditions.

1. https://planningportal.pp.tqinfra.co.uk/find-your-local-planning-authority
2. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pre-planning-application-enquiry-form-preliminary-opinion
3. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/planning-and-marine-licence-advice-standard-terms-for-our-charges
4. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/protect-groundwater-and-prevent-groundwater-pollution/protect-groundwater-and-prevent-groundwater-pollution
5. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/land-contamination-risk-management-lcrm/lcrm-stage-1-risk-assessment#tier-1-preliminary-risk-assessment
6. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/land-contamination-risk-management-lcrm/lcrm-stage-1-risk-assessment#tier-2-generic-quantitative-risk-assessment
7. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/land-contamination-risk-management-lcrm/lcrm-stage-1-risk-assessment#tier-1-preliminary-risk-assessment
8. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/land-contamination-risk-management-lcrm/lcrm-stage-1-risk-assessment#tier-2-generic-quantitative-risk-assessment
9. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/land-contamination-risk-management-lcrm/lcrm-stage-2-options-appraisal
10. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/land-contamination-risk-management-lcrm/lcrm-stage-3-remediation-and-verification#step-1-develop-a-remediation-strategy
11. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/land-contamination-risk-management-lcrm/lcrm-stage-3-remediation-and-verification#step-4
12. https://www.claire.co.uk/projects-and-initiatives/dow-cop/29-executing-dowcop-projects/116-materials-management-plan-mmp
13. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/land-contamination-risk-management-lcrm/lcrm-stage-3-remediation-and-verification#remediation-and-verification-reporting-requirements