Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of reintroducing funding to clean up contaminated brownfield land.

Local Authorities have a statutory responsibility under Part 2A of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 to inspect their areas from ‘time to time’ to identify and require the remediation of any land.

The Government recognises that in particularly severe or complex cases Landfill Tax can act as a prohibitive financial barrier to the remediation and redevelopment of contaminated land. My Department held a Call for Evidence on this issue and published a Government response in March this year. As a result of this evidence, we are currently developing a grant scheme to fund costs of Landfill Tax to public bodies in England, where such costs are acting as a determinative barrier to the remediation and redevelopment of contaminated land.