Environmental Consultants near you

The Environment Agency, Natural Resources Wales, SEPA and the Northern Ireland Environment Agency all expect land contamination work to follow land contamination risk management, known as LCRM. It has three stages: risk assessment, options appraisal, then remediation and verification. Stage 1 is tiered, running from a preliminary risk assessment through generic quantitative risk assessment to detailed quantitative risk assessment.

You must always start with the preliminary risk assessment. If it concludes the risks are acceptable and the regulator agrees, the process can stop there, which is why a good desk study is worth paying properly for. Where the risks are not acceptable, stage 2 shortlists remediation options against evaluation criteria and stage 3 delivers a remediation strategy, the works themselves and a verification report.

Trade language and regulator language differ here, and that trips people up. Consultants and lenders still say Phase 1 and Phase 2; the guidance your council will judge the report against says stage 1 tiers and intrusive site investigation. They describe the same fieldwork, so ask which the deliverable will be written to.

LCRM expects whoever applies it to be competent in the specific task, and in England that means meeting the competent person definition in Annex 2 of the National Planning Policy Framework. The guidance lists the credentials that usually demonstrate this: a Suitably Qualified Person registered under the National Quality Mark Scheme, the SoBRA accreditation scheme, a Specialist in Land Condition, a specialist under the gas protection verification scheme, or chartered membership of a relevant body with real land contamination experience.

The National Quality Mark Scheme is voluntary and run by CL:AIRE, not by government, but the Environment Agency, Natural Resources Wales and SEPA all support its use. A registered Suitably Qualified Person quality checks the report and signs a declaration that it has been verified under the scheme. It does not replace regulator review and it carries a small administration fee, so ask whether it is included before you assume it is.

Most contaminated land work in this country is delivered through planning rather than through enforcement. The planning practice guidance is explicit that an applicant should supply proportionate site investigation information prepared by a competent person so the authority can judge whether more investigation or different remediation is needed. Conditions are typically written in sequence, so the investigation report, the remediation strategy and the verification report each have to be approved before the next stage of building can proceed.

Two other regimes bite at the same time. Building Regulations require reasonable precautions against contaminants in the ground to be covered by buildings, and an environmental permit from the Environment Agency is normally needed to treat or redeposit contaminated soils where those soils count as waste. Ask early which of the three your scheme engages, because the permit route has its own timetable that will not bend around your start on site.

Part 2A of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 requires every local authority to inspect its area from time to time to identify contaminated land and to decide whether any of it should be designated a special site. Land only meets the statutory definition where significant harm is being caused or there is a significant possibility of it, or where significant pollution of controlled waters is being caused or is significantly possible.

Liability follows the polluter first. Anyone who caused or knowingly permitted the substances to be in, on or under the land is an appropriate person, and only for remediation referable to the substances they caused or permitted. Where no such person can be found, the burden can fall on the current owner or occupier, which is exactly why purchasers pay for investigation before completion rather than after.

Part 2A is deliberately a last resort: the statutory guidance directs it at land that cannot be dealt with any other way, including through planning. In practice your consultant's job is usually to keep you out of the regime rather than to argue inside it.

The Environment Agency covers England and was established in 1996; SEPA covers Scotland and describes its own role as spanning regulation, monitoring and resolving environmental harm; Natural Resources Wales covers Wales and the Northern Ireland Environment Agency covers Northern Ireland. LCRM applies across all four, but Scotland has additional SEPA contaminated land guidance and an information note on using LCRM there, and Wales expects the Natural Resources Wales land contamination guidance to be followed alongside it.

None of them is normally your first point of contact. Local authorities are the lead regulators for both the planning system and the Part 2A regime, and LCRM tells you to check with the local authority that using the guidance is acceptable at all. The national bodies step in for special sites and wherever there is a risk of pollution to controlled waters. When you are choosing a consultant, ask which councils they have discharged conditions with recently, not which agency they name on the website.