The Environment Agency has published a report entitled Dealing with Contaminated Land in England. It gives an overview of a survey commission by DEFRA to which only 60% of local authorities responded. Given the number that did not respond (129) the results should be treated with extreme caution.
Bizarrely the report states that from 2000 to 2013 511 ‘sites’, or 1087 individual properties, have been determined as contaminated land, whereas the previous EA report indicated 659 sites had been determined up to March 2007. This is put down to the low response rate to the survey. Using the figures from 2008 – 2013 when 164 sites were determined this would seem to indicate that the actual figure is over 820 sites.
The majority of those sites determined related to potential harm to human health from arsenic, lead and/or BaP with asbestos identified on 16 sites.