In outline our role is to:

1. Inspect the Council's area to identify any contaminated land.
2. Establish responsibilities for remediation of the land.
3. Ensure that appropriate remediation takes place through agreement with those responsible, or if not possible by serving a remediation notice, or in certain cases, carrying out the work themselves, or through other powers.
4. Keep a public register detailing the regulatory action which they have taken under the new regime.
5. Public registers will contain information about regulatory action as it occurs. They will record remediation notices as they are served and remediation statements as they are published. Information on the register is not deleted, so that appropriate action can be taken later e.g. if proposals are made to change the use of that land.

The Contaminated Land Strategy

Local authorities are the main regulators for this new regime and must publish a strategy for inspecting their land. We published our contaminated land strategy in June 2001:

Oxford Contaminated Land Strategy (PDF)

The main objective of the strategy is to meet the legal requirements set out in the Environmental Protection Act 1990, Part II A, and in particular the City's duty to inspect its area for contaminated land. One of its primary purposes is to prioritise sites for further investigation. The strategy describes how the City will progress from a situation where it is looking at the whole of its area to a situation where it is able to consider individual sites.

Approach in Oxford

The approach described is to build on extensive work already carried out in the Pollution, Noise and Licensing Section of Environmental Health in carrying out risk assessments of known areas of potentially contaminated land in the City. Considerable data is already held on the Land Quality Database. This Geographic Information System (GIS) will be the main tool in developing the Council's contaminated land strategy and in the prioritisation of sites for further investigation. The information contained on the GIS and how this will be used to identify and prioritise sites is described in the strategy.

Before land can be considered contaminated, i.e. that harm is being caused to health or the environment, a pollution linkage must be identified. This means that the mere presence of a contaminant is not sufficient. It must move along a 'pathway' to a 'receptor' before harm can be caused. If this link is established the land, by definition, becomes contaminated land. For this reason resources will be concentrated where potential land contamination and receptors coincide. Significant and imminent risks to human health will always be given the highest priority.

Who will be affected?

Any person, organisation or business might be liable to remediate contaminated land. This would be if they caused or knowingly permitted the contamination, or if they own or occupy contaminated land in a case where no polluter can be found. While any business sector might thus be affected, some industrial activities were especially prone to cause contamination in the past. In Oxford this would include gas works, motor manufacturing works, foundries, printing works, waste disposal activities, fuel depots, filling stations and garages.