Major former industrial sites such as Redcar steelworks on Teeside have required huge sums to clean up Five decades on from Britain’s rapid shift away from an economy based on heavy industry, the toxins it left behind continued to blight the country’s towns and cities, data seen byThe untreated legacy of heavy industry is hemming in development and weighing on Britain’s struggling towns.
Warrington, which topped the list, had more than 40 million square metres, around 21 per cent of its total land area. The borough council said that this was a figure for “potentially” contaminated land, rather than official designated sites, and suggested the figure was so high partly because of concerted efforts to map possible issues and improve the land.Also high on the list were Sefton in Liverpool, Hillingdon in west London, Waverley in Surrey and Mendip in Somerset.
That is, it would cost so much to make it safe for construction that owners would need to pay someone else to take it on., ministers are increasingly focused on building on brownfield sites, many of which are contaminated.Experts working on Government efforts to bring more brownfield sites into housing use told“People don’t like development on green spaces, so there’s been more push for that to be on brown spaces, but there are particular challenges.
Such mega-projects are rare, however. On smaller sites scattered across the country the cost of clean-ups remains a significant deterrent to homebuilding.