Michael Moore, senior contaminated land officer at Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council, studied at Plymouth University and worked in private consulting for several years before joining the public sector.
He worked for St Helens and Trafford Councils before joining Rochdale MBC and now has over nine years experience within the public sector as a contaminated land officer, the majority of that time being on land assessment, dealing with both planning submissions and Part 2A issues.
He will be speaking at Brownfield Briefing's Ground Gas 2009 conference on 18 November, so we caught up with him ahead of the event.
1. What do you predict will be major brownfield issues in 2020?
Increased pressure to develop brownfield sites rather than greenfield; since the population is steadily getting larger and space to expand is becoming more restricted.
Similarly, pressure to supply more affordable homes will become overwhelming by then. Even taking into account the recent drop in house prices we are still getting to the point where a large proportion of the population will never be able to afford their own homes. Supplying affordable homes will be a challenge over the next years and using brownfield sites will be the obvious choice.
2. If you could choose one regeneration project that you could magically complete right now, which would it be and why?
TBA site in Rochdale, a former asbestos site which, in its heyday, was one of the largest in Europe producing asbestos products and dumped asbestos waste on part of the site.
The site is situated in a valley comprising the former factory, presently occupied by commercial units surrounded by woodland which contains asbestos dumps. To what extent the surrounding land has been impacted by the long term asbestos emissions release has yet to be assessed. Re-development of the factory site has been proposed. Hopefully it will help remove an eyesore and bring back into productive use a large portion of land presently becoming more derelict each year.
However assessment of the site is proving very difficult in the absence of a SGV for asbestos. Assessment of the surrounding area and remediation of the main tip will help create an area of woodland and open space which could be of great amenity value for the people of Rochdale.
3. What do you think are the three biggest brownfield developments/achievements from this year?
One has to be the launch of the re-vamped CLEA model, although it remains to be seen how it will develop. In Rochdale we are getting to the point where we have a prioritised list of sites and will be undertaking intrusive investigations, hopefully the model we use to assist us in assessing these sites on a risk basis, without having to pay consultant fees which will eat into our pitifully small investigations budget!
The publication of new GACs, which have been produced through cooperation in different sections of the industry for a large range of compounds. Hopefully these will assist both consultants and regulators to make accurate and safe decisions more quickly.
The Corby case, the ramification of this development as yet to be felt particularly in local authorities, I have already been requested by management to provide a list of sites which the authority has remediated which could possibly be affected by this judgement. It will however raise the profile of contaminated land assessments within local authorities, especially when it comes to remediating Council-owned Part 2A sites.
4. If you could change one piece of legislation/regulation what would it be and why?
Part 2A, specifically on how to decide SPOSH, while I agree local authorities should have the final say on whether to or not to determine; after all they will be most knowledgeable about the site and the affected community. I feel there should be an independent central body to advise local authority officers on what could constitute SPOSH. This could avoid the problem of one authority determining on levels which another authority has chosen to walk away from.
