Ann Barker, the lead contaminated land officer at Bradford Metropolitan District Council, has over 20 years experience of dealing with land quality issues both in consultancy and as a regulator. In her current role, she leads on implementation of Part 2A and strategic land quality issues. She will be speaking at Brownfield Briefing's Ground Gas 2009 conference on 18 November, so we caught up with her ahead of the event.
1. What do you predict will be the major brownfield issues in 2020?
Optimistically:
- Refocusing of regulatory expertise into regeneration as all Part 2A/SFD priority sites will have been dealt with
- Celebrating several years of a robust system of supported skills development and accreditation for all land quality professionals.
Pessimistically:
- Dealing with the acute reality of climate change including its impact on fate and transport of contamination
- Re-remediation of sites where contaminant management systems fail
- Out-sourcing of regulation resulting in poor enforcement, allowing unscrupulous developers to compromise on cost and quality of redevelopment, consequently leaving a significantly contracted consultancy sector.
2. If you could choose one regeneration project that you could magically complete right now, which would it be and why?
Nationally, the Olympics site, partly because some pragmatic lessons being learnt there can then be shared with the rest of the land quality sector and also because, to some extent, it distracts attention away from other important regeneration projects across the rest of the country.
Locally and predictably, remediation and restoration of Manywells Landfill site to provide a positive benefit for the local community who have to live with the reality of contamination and also deal with the stress it causes.
3. What do you think are the three biggest brownfield developments/ achievements from this year?
Publication of SGVs and supporting documents, particularly for some of the ubiquitous contaminants such as arsenic, the development of GACs by CIEH/LQM and ongoing progress on the EIC/AGS GACs.
The ongoing development of a Brownfield Skills framework through the HCA Brownfield and Contaminated Land Forum.
Consolidation of the regional brownfield regeneration forums such as Yorkshire Contaminated Land Forum and the North West Brownfield Regeneration Forum to bring together land quality professionals from public and private sectors for joint, regional learning and networking.
4. If you could change one piece of legislation/regulation what would it be and why?
I would change the planning regime to ensure a verification report and, where necessary, supporting documents, are produced and placed on an accessible public register for every site. Repetition of site investigations due to poor access to records wastes resources and increases development expenditure; and in some situations, appropriate reassessment of existing information has the potential to reduce the need for additional work and result in lower costs.
Ms Barker chairs the Environmental Protection UK Land Quality Committee and chaired the Yorkshire & Humberside Pollution Advisory Council Land Sub-Committee for eight years. She is a founder of the Yorkshire Contaminated Land Forum, is on the steering group for the Better Business & Environment Forum in West Yorkshire and represents YAHPAC on the advisory group of the CIEH Standing Conference on Land Contamination. She has a degree in geology, a post graduate diploma in Environmental Protection and a MSc in Contaminated Land Management. She is also a guest lecturer at Leeds Metropolitan and Bradford Universities.
