Soil Health

Simon Danczuk Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Simon Danczuk (Rochdale) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. It is also a delight to follow the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow), who made an excellent speech. She certainly educated me on a range of issues. I welcome the Environmental Audit Committee’s recent report on soil health across the UK, and I commend the work by my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh), who secured this important debate.

DEFRA funding for contaminated land has been vital for towns such as Rochdale. The removal of such funding seriously impairs my local council’s ability to tackle this environmental problem. My community’s rich industrial history has had a lasting legacy, not all of which has been positive. The former Turner Brothers Asbestos site in Spodden valley spans 30 hectares. It was the world’s largest asbestos textile factory until it ceased production in the 1990s. Asbestos scourged the lives of many of the men and women who worked in the textile factory. My predecessor, Cyril Smith, who owned shares in the business, did much to protect and promote the industry even when he would have known that it was killing his constituents.

Today, Spodden valley lies barren, depriving the people of Rochdale space for recreation, services or even homes. My ideal is for the site to become an urban park, a green lung in memory of all those killed by asbestos. Whether that is possible, I am unsure; what I do know is that the site is a ticking time bomb. There are strong suggestions that asbestos was tipped on the site and still sits there in the soil. We know for a fact that many of the derelict buildings on the site contain asbestos.

Therefore, for the people of Rochdale, it is imperative that the Government take soil protection seriously and commit to properly funding the investigation and clean-up of contaminated land. The Environment Agency, the Health and Safety Executive and Public Health England also need to do more, particularly in relation to Spodden valley. Such challenges are too great for local authorities to face on their own.

In the past, Rochdale has benefited enormously from the contaminated land capital grants scheme for carrying out work required by the part 2A regime of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, which my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield mentioned. Among other sites, four former landfills in Rochdale were inspected using such funding, resulting in three determinations of contaminated land and remediation. Once again, Government funding was vital.

Now Rochdale relies on site owners to undertake voluntary inspections. We are fortunate in the case of Spodden valley that the intrusive site work inspection is being undertaken by the site owners themselves. However, we fear that that may not be the case for future sites in Rochdale, which could be left blighted for the foreseeable future as potential developers see investment as unviable.

The council’s estimated costs for the work on the former Turner Brothers Asbestos site are astronomical. Because of the size, history and potential complexity of the site, further investigations are needed to fill the information gaps. The council will continue to work hard to support the site owner, but we know that it simply could not afford to undertake such a monumental task all by itself. Rochdale Council, like many other local authorities throughout the country, believes that councils will struggle to meet their statutory obligations for contaminated land now that funding under part 2A of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 is being phased out. Councils are rightly expected to uphold good environmental standards but will no longer be given adequate financial support by central Government. Such requirements will become burdensome. Intrusive site investigations and comprehensive risk assessments—not to mention clean-up charges—are incredibly costly.

In this matter, as in so many things, the Government are shirking their responsibilities and punishing local authorities by demanding that they do more and more with less and less every year. In Rochdale, an area with high levels of deprivation, cuts to local government have hit hard. Services that local people depend on have been cut to the bone. The local authority simply does not have spare cash lying around. We need central Government support. Throughout the 20th century, factories in Rochdale and throughout the north-west pumped money into the Exchequer, as did their employees. Now that those industries have gone, the Government appear to be turning a blind eye to their environmental legacy and to families who live with threats from land, such as at Spodden valley.

Local authorities are having an incredibly tough time. With their shrinking budgets, it is simply impossible to expect them to pick up the extortionate bill for investigating and cleaning up contaminated land. I therefore urge the Minister to take seriously the recommendations made in the Environmental Audit Committee report.