Part 2A of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 was introduced specifically to address the historical legacy of contaminated land. Its intended role was to enable the identification and clean-up of land where contamination is causing unacceptable risks to human health or to the wider environment.

It is government policy to ensure that the polluter pays, and councils have powers to make polluters clean up contaminated land.

Contaminated land strategy

Inline with Part 2A, all councils must outline their approach to the identification of contaminated land in a written strategy.

Our contaminated land strategy was first published in July 2001, followed by an update and review in February 2005 and a complete rewrite in January 2010.

The strategy explains how our environmental protection unit will inspect the city for contaminated land, manage the information generated, assess all sites which could potentially fall under the definition of contaminated land and secure remediation. The strategy also includes information on timescales and progress made since 2001.

The current contaminated land strategy, published in January 2010, can be downloaded from this page.

Contaminated land register

The environmental protection unit maintains a public register of land that has been determined as contaminated under Part 2A. The register contains information on remediation notices and details of the condition of the land.

There are currently no entries on our contaminated land register.