Ian Heasman of Taylor Wimpey has an earth sciences background and 20 years' experience of environmental assessment and management in industry, consultancy and academia. His main area of expertise is brownfield regeneration, focusing on site characterisation, risk assessment and remediation, as well as policy and legislative matters.
Mr Heasman will be speaking at Brownfield Briefing's Contaminated Land and Brownfield Remediation conference on 22 September, so we caught up with him ahead of the event.
What do you predict will be major brownfield issues in 2020?
By 2020 brownfield sustainability will be more fully integrated into the day job. Carbon accounting will be well established, and eco system services assessment will be a new planning requirement. As climate change takes hold, insurance concerns will push development further from flood risk areas. The high cost of zero carbon housing will mean that more seriously contaminated sites are not viable. However punitive landfill tax rates and ‘zero waste' thinking will be a boost to both on site remediation and to the established network of soil treatment centres.
If you could choose one regeneration project that you could complete right now, which would it be and why?
I started working on Greenwich Millennium Village in 1997 when building an eco village on such a seriously contaminated site was pretty ground breaking. I think the original build programme was about 10 years but today it is only 50% complete. It would be great to see that one completed.
What do you think are the three biggest brownfield developments/achievements from this year?
Firstly, well done to all those in surviving the credit crunch and the development crash, although bruised the sector will emerge leaner and stronger.
SuRF UK has commenced some great work on a UK sustainability framework, in some respects in advance of SuRF US - a great achievement!
The Code of Practice for waste and development is a well crafted and intelligent (albeit complex) solution for a problem that we would have been better off never having created for ourselves! Hopefully it will fix off-site transfers and soil treatment centres and then we can get on with life.
If you could change one piece of legislation/regulation what would it be and why?
I would like to go back in a time capsule to Brussels to the years proceeding 1975. Against a background of disco music, I would explain to the European legislators discussing the original Waste Framework Directive some of the ramifications of the proposed definition of waste!
