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Treasury prevents brownfield clean-up - budget will not stop green belt housing threat
11 March 1998
Next Tuesday's Budget will not help prevent the housing threat facing Britain's green belt,environment pressure group Friends of the Earth warned today. The news comes as the first report of Parliament's new Environmental Audit Committee indicts New Labour for failing to put the environment at the heart of Government.
There are thought to be about 100,000 contaminated land sites in the UK. A detailed survey by the (then) Department of Environment in 1993 identified 39,600 hectares of land "so damaged by industrial or other development that it is incapable of beneficial use without treatment". Half of this land is in urban areas. Total contaminated land, according to the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, could cover up to 200,000 hectares. The cost of dealing with this toxic legacy could be as high as 10 billion.
These polluted brownfield sites could be a prime source of land for new housing. It has been estimated by the DETR that 4.4 million new homes could be needed in the next 20 years. Environment Secretary John Prescott recently set a target of 60% of these homes to be built on brownfield sites. Friends of the Earth is demanding a brownfield target of 75%.
Draft regulations to tackle the problem were first proposed by John Gummer, Environment Secretary in the previous Conservative Government, but lapsed at the General Election.Labour's Environment Minister Michael Meacher has written to Andrew Bennett MP, Chair of the Environment Committee, stating that "we cannot implement the legislation until we can provide the necessary funding", and that the Treasury's block on new public spending is preventing progress.
The new Regulations would require local authorities to conduct surveys, and prioritise the most polluted sites. There is currently no comprehensive register of contaminated land.FOE wants identified polluters to pay the cost of land reclamation. In cases where no polluter is known, the bill should be met through pollution taxes including landfill and aggregates, and possibly a greenfield site tax, as proposed by John Prescott.
Commenting, FOE Executive Director Charles Secrett said:
"Britain's countryside is threatened by massive greenfield housing development. At the same time tens of thousands of hectares of polluted land exist in our inner cities. Yet the Environment Department cannot act to get them cleaned up for new housing, because of the Treasury's blinkered insistence on inherited spending limits. Polluters should pay the cost of the clean-up. And where they can't pollution taxes should be used for the purpose.If this Budget is to have any green credibility, Gordon Brown must act to allow polluted land to be cleaned up for the benefit of future generations."
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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust
Last modified: Jul 2008
