By Trevor Hellawell
Publisher: Blackstone Press
Price: £35.95
The long-awaited contaminated land regime is now finally in force in England, but at the time of writing this review it is yet to be implemented in Wales.
The regime aims to identify those sites that pose a ‘significant possibility’ of ‘significant harm’ to the environment and to establish a process whereby those sites are then remediated at little or no cost to the public purse. Given that the UK Government itself has indicated that there may be between 50 to 100,000 hectares of contaminated land within the UK, the regime will have far-reaching implications for property owners as well as their advisers.
Blackstone’s Guide represents excellent value in that it contains full copies of the Contaminated Land (England) Regulations 2000 and the Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) Circular on Contaminated Land, as well as the relevant extract from the Environmental Protection Act 1990 (the combined cost of which, if purchased separately from HMSO, would be £42.50).
The author’s text, which only comprises 48 of the 160 pages, is largely a rewording of the statutory guidance contained in the DETR Circular included in Appendix 3 to the Guide, and the majority of legal readers will no doubt prefer to go straight to the source material included in the Guide’s Appendices. Despite the publisher’s claim, the book will not be ‘essential reading for solicitors and barristers practising in Environmental and Property Law’; indeed the author, Trevor Hellawell, makes it clear that this is not his aim, but rather “to simplify the complex piece of legislation”, a task to which the author is well-suited, as he is a former lecturer at the College of Law and author of the Law Society’s ‘Environmental Law Hand book’.
The readers who would gain the most from the book are those professionals other than lawyers who, by the nature of their practice and profession, will need to have a clear understanding, if not a detailed working knowledge, of the new
statutory contaminated land regime.
Professionals such as chartered surveyors, town planners and financiers, would be well-advised to start their reading with Chapter 6 in which the author sets out the implications of the regime. As Hellawell points out: “All land is second-hand; so when buying property it is essential to bear in mind – and provide for – the possibility that the buyer will inherit some or all of the liabilities attaching to the site, or suffer a diminution in value in the future.”
What is certain is that the new statutory regime cannot be ignored and this handbook is written and priced so as to make this source material accessible to all.
