Lee Quarry Trailhead – Update

That was my first thought on reading that linked article – whenever anyone mentions “Health & Safety” as a reason not to be doing something, without anything more specific, or real, than that, I always get the faint whiff of male bovine excrement wafting past my nostrils…

Problem with contaminated land, and who was going to pay for the (expensive) clear up before any building work started, led to it being shelved.

Yep, that’s what I’d heard too.

Problem with contaminated land, and who was going to pay for the (expensive) clear up before any building work started, led to it being shelved.

as I understand it (so likely to be wrong) is it should have already been cleaned up with public money, that the records disappeared the quango dissolved. Then an actual test finds it hasn’t been sorted properly. It should be a police matter.

I imagine a carefully worded FOIA enquiry would reveal a lot about current RBC position

Potentially nasty part-cleared bronwfield land directly adjacent to a major watercourse – I can fully understand why Craig is reluctant to take it on until all liability has been sorted……

Does anyone from “the valley” know what sort of industry was there previously?

I couldn’t possibly comment but big n daft isn’t wrong. £ 3m disappeared into that site in the mid noughties to clean it up and make it ready for a hi-tech business park (in Bacup! so it’s was flawed from the start). All we have now is one building conveniently occupied by the council (not very hi-tech) and a bridge. A number of big developers, Boys & Hurstwood have looked at the site in the past and run away screaming, read into that what you want.

Ride On had all the finance in place, paid for plans etc. and were going through final due diligence and asked for the clean up reports which had gone missing. Without those they were effectively playing Russian Roulette with their investment. The site historically had tannery waste and other nasties as well as big concrete foundations. Hitting any of those on the new build could have killed the whole thing financially. The council just said it’ll be reet, Ride On could afford to gamble their livelihoods. Ride On if it’s going to Ok under write any unexpected nasties, council said it wouldn’t.

A new contamination report was commissioned (I think by the council) to show it was all OK but that came back with at least asbestos contamination (probably a gift from the travelling community but could be more deep seated).

As B n D says someone should be dangling for that complete F Up. As a local tax payer I am not impressed.

Dissappointing news.