Judge Mr Justice Akenhead's ruling that Corby Borough Council is liable for negligence, breach of statutory duty and public nuisance may have serious repercussions for the brownfield industry, its lawyers have said.
Berrymans Lace Mawer, the council's legal representatives, said in a statement: "The increase in potential liabilities will do little to encourage an already depressed market in redevelopment. Those few potential purchasers that were considering projects will be thinking hard about taking on brownfield land with this type of litigation risk."
Corby Council still denies that there is a causal link between the remediation of contaminated land on a former steelworks site and the birth defects of a group of 18 children born while the work was being done.
The lawyers said the judgement, which they were very surprised by, "does highlight the need to give careful consideration of appropriate risk assessments for current projects."
"For both local authorities and developers alike this is a significant concern because the standard of care has been drawn very highly, and could cause a rethink of the way that reclamation is carried out in the UK, even though the facts of the case are historic."
However Mr Akenhead offered a word of hope at the end of his long judgment, stressing that Corby was an exceptionally contaminated site in a very high-risk area: "It is of course for others to judge the impact of this judgment on future works and practices on contaminated sites. The Corby reclamation was, however, in some senses at least, a ‘one-off' reclamation involving a very large contaminated steel work site which was very close to a town centre.
"Whilst there will remain brownfield sites in the UK which are contaminated, there will be very few which are so large or so extensively contaminated as the Corby site."
