Contaminated land

Advice for residents and householders

If you find your land has been contaminated, then please contact us. We have a duty to make sure it does not pose a significant risk to public health or the environment.

For more information on what is contaminated land, please visit the government’s website.

What can be done about it?

If required, we can clean the land using a variety of methods depending on the type of contamination:

removing the source of contamination
covering the contamination with clean material
mixing it with cement
treating the soil with microbes
alter the design of the development to minimise the risk

Who should pay for the clean-up?

By law, the person or organisation that allowed the contamination of the land must pay. However, the costs may fall to the current landowner if the person or organisation no longer exists.

Please read our policy explaining the situations when we may be able to help with cleaning up any contamination if you are the owner-occupier of your home.

What can I do if land contamination is affecting my house sale or purchase?

If contamination has been identified as a potential concern, then you could:

appoint an environmental consultant to investigate – go to www.ends.co.uk for a list of consultants
get the appropriate environmental insurance
request any available land contamination information from us by submitting an environmental information enquiry form

Developer guidance

You can read our guidance leaflet for developers that we produced in collaboration with the Oxfordshire Contaminated Land Group.

Depending on what you are planning to build, we may need to complete a full contaminated land risk assessment. You can start this process by downloading and completing a contaminated land questionnaire and sending it in to the environmental protection team.

Download the contaminated land questionnaire here