News

Updated guidance for the investigation of land potentially affected by contamination has been published, reinforcing the UK’s framework for safe, sustainable land development. BS 10175:2026 will supersede BS 10175:2011 which will be withdrawn.

Get the standard from BSI

Read the Press release

Read the Executive Briefing

The JRC has recently published a report on Existing International and European Standards related to the soil strategy.

The present technical report provides an inventory of 574 soil-related standards from international and European standard bodies including the International Organization for Standardisation (ISO) and the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN), as well as standards from other well-recognised international institutions including the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO-GLOSOLAN) and demonstrates the need for harmonisation of soil-related standards to ensure consistency and comparability of soil data and to support effective soil management and protection efforts.

Download the report from the JRC

Paul Bardos has prepared a series of podcasts on 5 key topics useful to teams preparing proposals for European Project calls, with a particular emphasis on Horizon Europe projects.

Call text, templates, programme destinations

Consortia and their management

Clear proposal narratives

Key principles in responding to Horizon calls for proposals

European Project Evaluation – Focusing on HE

Available from the SURRI Project website

BS 10175:2026 Investigation of potentially contaminated sites – Code of practice is now published and effective from 31 January, 2026.

This is a full revision of the standard, and introduces the following principal changes:

• consolidation of Amendments Nos. 1 and 2 into the text;
• updating of external references to guidance and regulatory regimes;
• revision with regard to some technical and wider issues, including climate change and sustainability;
• insertion of Clause 4, which introduces various issues including sustainability, safety, wellbeing and welfare and personnel (more detail for some of these topics is provided in other parts of the text);
• division of the former Clause 5 into Clause 6 (Developing an investigation strategy) and Clause 7, Scope and application of investigations; and thorough revision of informative annexes: Annex A (Examples of site investigations), Annex B (Example investigation objectives and applications), Annex C (Health and safety in site investigations), Annex D (The assessment and control of sampling uncertainty), Annex E (Rapid field measurement methods), Annex F (Laboratory analysis), Annex G (Leaching tests), Annex H (What is soil?), Annex I (Permits and consents etc. required prior to site investigation), Annex J (Information available from national, regulatory and other selected bodies).

Read the full information on the BSI Group website.

A range of lower input remediation techniques exist that can manage risks more sustainably and potentially at a lower cost, allowing the treatment of stalled sites that are less economically feasible under current market conditions. Find out more by reading this new paper by Paul Bardos 𝘦𝘵 𝘢𝘭. in 𝘌𝘯𝘷𝘪𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘚𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦: 𝘈𝘥𝘷𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘴

Read the full article in Environmental Science: Advances

The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology have published POSTnote 759, which outlines evidence on environmental risks from legacy landfill sites in England, related policy and regulation, remediation and reducing risks.

Read the summary
href="https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/POST-PN-0759/POST-PN-0759.pdf"Download the full report</a></p>"

The UK Government has confirmed that it will not proceed with transitioning to a single rate of landfill tax by 2030, following pushback from the construction industry.

A consultation launched in April proposed abolishing the lower rate of landfill tax and significantly restricting exemptions.

Read the full article on Circular

UK government proposals to increase the cost of sending soil to landfill have received strong pushback from the construction industry. But there is a strong environmental case for protecting healthy soils in this way. The Treasury plans to up the cost of sending rock, soil and other “inert” materials to landfill. Charges could rise from £4.05 to up to £125 per tonne of soil landfilled by 2030. Concerns have been raised that this tax increase will be damaging for the construction industry and a major hindrance to meeting the UK government’s targets on new homes.

Read the full article at "The Conversation"

Lead exposure is one of the most urgent yet overlooked development challenges of our time. It affects millions of people worldwide — especially children — causing irreversible health damage and limiting the social and economic progress of communities. But a lead-free world is achievable. This new report, A World Without Lead: Paving the Path to a Healthy, Productive Future, showcases the latest global evidence on the cost of lead exposure and outlines a clear path toward a lead-free world. The findings show that this crisis is both preventable and solvable.

Read the full article at worldbank.org

The European Council presidency and the European Parliament’s representatives reached a provisional political agreement on a proposed directive to review and update the lists of pollutants affecting surface waters and groundwater and corresponding regulatory standards. This agreement updates environmental quality standards for a number of pollutants and adds new ones (e.g. 24 PFAS, TFA), aligning EU water policy with the latest scientific evidence.

Read the full press release on the European Council website

In June 2025, 11 former executives of the chemical company Miteni were sentenced to a total of 141 years in prison by a criminal court in northeastern Italy. A group of mothers living near the Miteni chemical plant in Vicenza, found their lives turned upside down in 2017 when blood tests revealed dangerously high concentrations of PFOA in their children.

Read the full article on euronews.
Read about the same case from Università degli Studi di Padova, Centro di Ateneo per i Diritti Umani "Antonio Papisca" (In English or Italian)

Related: France Bans PFAS on Consumer Products

“Alarmingly high” levels of toxic forever chemicals have been detected at English airports – in some cases thousands of times higher than proposed EU safe levels – with experts raising concerns over the potential impact on drinking water sources, according to information obtained by the Ends Report and the Guardian via an environmental information request.

Read the article in The Guardian.
Read the article on the Ends Report (registration or subscription required)

The UK government has approved research on the scale of the pollution challenges arising from legacy landfill, also known as an old, historic, or closed landfill, in the UK and is looking for information on issues relevant to the project.

Closing date for contributions is 5 September 2025, with publication expected in December 2025.

Read the full POST article on UK.gov

CL:AIRE has published the National Brownfield Forum's Task and Finish Group report and supporting evidence cards titled "Interactions between Government Policies affecting the Planning and Development of Brownfield Land in England". It has been published on the National Brownfield Forum's web page Brownfield Forum . Both reports have been published under the Task and Finish Group header.

Direct downloads from the CL:AIRE website:
Task and Finish Group Brownfield Policies Report July 2025 Task and Finish Group Brownfield Policies Report July 2025 - Evidence Cards

The Land Contamination Risk Management (LCRM) guidance has been updated to include Scotland, making LCRM guidance applicable throughout the UK.

The Environment Agency, Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA), Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) and Natural Resources Wales expect you to follow LCRM if you are managing the risks from historic land contamination.

Read more at gov.uk

Read more at claire.co.uk

The UK Parliament has published a research briefing entitled "Regulation and remediation of 'forever' chemicals".

Read more at parliament.uk

Download the full document

The UK government is consulting on reform of Landfill Tax in England and Northern Ireland. Among the proposals is a transition to a single rate of Landfill Tax by 2030 by applying an escalator to the lower rate until it meets the standard rate in 2030.

The consultation closes on 21 July 2025.

Consultation document (PDF)

Consultation document (web page)

Have your say in the online response form.

Stakeholders, experts, and practitioners are invited to review proposals on advancing Sustainable and Risk-Based Land Management and provide feedback through a short survey of 15 questions.

The ISLANDR Project will use the inputs to help refine a user-friendly roadmap designed to support diverse stakeholders facing a variety of land management challenges.

Go to the survey

Read more about ISLANDR at islandr-project.eu

The following new functionalities have been added to the dashboard in 2025:

• Correlation matrix replacing the dependency wheel
• Country profiles comparing soil degradation in the Member States

Go to the EUSO Soil Degradation Dashboard

Actions announced in April 2025 to address Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) include the designation of an agency lead for PFAS, the creation of effluent limitations guidelines (ELGs) for certain PFAS to stop these forever chemicals from entering drinking water systems, and initiatives to engage with Congress and industry to establish a clear liability framework that ensures the polluter pays and passive receivers are protected.

Read the full press release from the U.S. EPA

The Science study, led by Chinese scientist Deyi Hou and his colleagues, is one of the most comprehensive mapping efforts of heavy metals in agricultural soil. By combining recent advances in machine learning with an expansive dataset of 796,084 soil concentrations from 1,493 studies, the authors systematically assessed global soil pollution for seven toxic metals: arsenic, cadmium, cobalt, chromium, copper, nickel, and lead.

Read the full article in The Conversation

Update 29/04/2025:There have been a range of researcher responses to this paper: https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-study-looking-at-the-global-distribution-of-cropland-contaminated-by-heavy-metal-pollution/

On the 10th of April, the European Council reached a provisional deal with the European Parliament on a directive establishing a framework for soil monitoring to improve resilience and manage the risks of contaminated sites. The directive will also set out land-take mitigation principles with a focus on soil sealing and soil removal.

Read the full press release from the European Council

This review has been undertaken by Dan Corry. It is worth taking a closer look at Recommendation 13, which states: "The work to update the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016 to allow regulators more flexibility to take sensible, risk-based decisions should be accelerated because it is particularly important in supporting net-zero and circular economy priorities, for example facilitating the development of low carbon industrial infrastructure, and for ensuring remediated soil is not unnecessarily categorised as waste."

Read the full report at gov.uk

The UK Government imposes a statutory duty on local authorities to inspect potentially contaminated sites, but in the majority of cases this is not being done, reportedly due to lack of funds.

Read the full article on the BBC news website

Read the perspective of two atmospheric scientists from the Universities of Edinburgh and Leeds on this Netflix drama, published in The Conversation France (in English).

To quote the authors: "With the UK no longer following EU environmental standards and the US rolling back key pollution regulations and scaling down environmental enforcement, the issues at the heart of Toxic Town feel more urgent than ever."

The series itself is likely a rather controversial retelling from the perspective of many land contamination practitioners.

Read the full article in The Conversation.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) of the UK Government has recently updated the following:

• Green Belt guidance
• Effective use of land guidance
• Brownfield development guidance

as well as publishing

• Government response to the proposed plan-making reforms: consultation on implementation
• The Community Infrastructure Levy (Amendment etc.) (England) Regulations 2025 - Draft

A concise summary is available in an Irwin Mitchell LLP round up.

EUSO has launched the EU Soil Strategy Actions Tracker. This new tool tracks the progress of policy actions listed in the EU Soil Strategy for 2030.

• The EU Soil Strategy Actions Tracker contains detailed information on each action, including due date, recent updates, links to related EU policies and links to relevant sources.
• The Tracker shows that currently 62 out of 90 actions (almost 70%) are completed; 24 actions (almost 30%) are still in progress.

The Soil Strategy Actions Tracker is developed by the EU Soil Observatory (EUSO) of the Joint Research Centre, in cooperation with the Directorate-General for Environment (DG ENV). It will be extended to monitor all EU policy actions relevant to soils and is thus a rolling assessment of progress on formal policy commitments on soil.

Go to the EU Soil Strategy Actions Tracker.

The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) is a research and knowledge exchange service based in the UK Parliament. It works to ensure that the best available research evidence and information is brought to bear on the legislative process and scrutiny of Government. It primarily supports the select committees of both Houses.

POST is collating a guidance note for politicians to outline the challenges and options for addressing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance pollution. These notes published are open access (internationally). At this point in time POST is open to submissions and inputs (till 17/2/25). You may want to make an input / may want to flag an interest in being on the mailing list for the output.

More information and consultation at post.parliament.uk

Consultation and survey now closed.

The ISLANDR project is running a consultation and survey on the management of excavated soil. The information and opinions collected will be used to deliver two outputs:

1. A cross-cutting analysis of approaches to excavated soil management across Europe to be submitted to an open access journal paper;
2. A template for countries or regions to establish excavated soil management administrative systems to maximise the circular economy opportunity for soil and other excavated materials in in line with the Waste Framework Directive and Soil Strategy.

In appreciation for your contribution, as part of the consultation and survey, you may request a copy of the findings, which will be available in the first quarter of 2025.

Please contact us if you have any questions.

The online forms are open until January 17, 2025 February 7, 2025.

During CL:AIRE's 25th Anniversary event, special recognition awards were given out to five people who have gone above and beyond, supporting CL:AIRE and the wider industry in meeting their charitable aims and objectives.

Congratulations to all the honorees.

Read the full article at CL:AIRE

This presentation explores how to incorporate sustainable outcomes into the planning phases of remediation and decommissioning projects, how these outcomes are measured and vary across the breadth of activities, and specific approaches and initiatives that can provide confidence in reaching sustainable goals. An emphasis is placed on the need for remediation and decommissioning projects to be sustainable, with a general understanding that this means the outcomes of such projects balance environmental, economic, and social considerations. Conceptually, the linkages between these considerations are well-defined and broadly endorsed. In practice, however, achieving sustainable solutions can be a significant challenge, particularly when measured across the many discrete activities that may be undertaken across typically protracted project life cycles. In addition, identifying and implementing sustainable solutions often requires extensive engagement across all stakeholder groups and resolution of sometimes competing objectives and priorities.

Read in full at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory RemPlex seminar
(Please note that this document is restricted by country. UK origin does work, but others cannot be guaranteed)

This report published by the European Commission delves into the intricate interplay between drivers, pressures and impacts on soil in the 32 Member States of the European Environment Agency (EEA), along with six cooperating countries from the West Balkans, Ukraine and UK, shedding light on the multifaceted challenges facing soil conservation efforts.

Read the full article in the JRC Publications Repository

The European Soil Data Centre (ESDAC) has the ambition to be the single reference point for and to host all relevant soil data and information at European level.
Most of the offered data are at European scale, while, when possible, links to national or global datasets are provided.
Datasets are publicly available (usually after registration) and are divided into five broad categories:

1. The European Soil Database (ESDB), datasets that have been derived with the help of the ESDB and general European datasets that contain soil properties.
2. Data that are related to soil threats (erosion, soil organic carbon, landslides, compaction, salinization, soil biodiversity, contaminated sites, soil sealing, etc.)
3. Data related to soil functions
4. Soil point data (LUCAS, SPADE, etc)
5. Data that stem from soil projects.

https://esdac.jrc.ec.europa.eu/resource-type/datasets-list

Class actions and multidistrict litigation (MDL) concerning perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have led to massive settlements by chemical companies that have totaled in the billions of dollars, and that has only been to mitigate the damages that per and polyfluoroalkyl substances can cause. We are only beginning to see individual and consolidated lawsuits filed by victims against PFAS manufacturers who have actually suffered concrete harm from being exposed to these toxic PFAS chemicals.

Read the full article on jdsupra.com

Regulation (EU) 2019/1021 on persistent organic pollutants implements the EU’s international commitments under the Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants (chemical substances). Following a decision to add UV-328 to the Convention, this initiative amends Annex I to the Regulation to include UV-328 as a substance subject to certain restrictions.

Login is required to provide feedback.

Find out more information at ec.europa.eu/

EPA, through its RE-Powering America's Land Initiative, maintains a list of economic and environmental benefits that have been reported by communities and developers associated with renewable energy projects on contaminated lands. Compiled from publicly available information, the latest benefits matrix offers detailed insights into how benefits such as lease and tax revenues, reduced electricity costs, job creation, and lower greenhouse gas emissions have been realised across different projects.

The locations of completed projects with their associated benefits can be explored using the Benefits Mapper.

Read the full article on epa.gov

The EU Soil Monitoring Law, designed to bolster the key role of soil in maintaining Europe's biodiversity and climate resilience, has been approved by MEPs, but only after the requirements it would place on national governments were significantly lightened.

Read the full article on Euronews.com

This guidance was released by the Chinese government in 2023.

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• Online version (Chinese) 

 

 

A new consultation seeks to pave the way for residential development on brownfield land (commonly referred to as ‘previously developed land’) in order to meet housing delivery targets across the country.

• Read the full article on Lexology.com
• Go to the consultation

At the end of November 2023 the Attorney General and the Governor of Ohio announced a US$110M settlement (currently pending court approval) with Du Pont De Nemours and Co. and The Chemours Company in response to a complaint alleging that during the course of six decades, Dupont continued to release vast quantities of perfluorooctanoic acid, known as PFOA or C8, in the groundwater, drinking water, soil, and air surrounding its plant even after it knew that PFOA was toxic to humans and the environment.

Concawe has published a new report called Case Studies and Analysis of Sustainable Remediation Techniques and Technologies. 

The report aims to fill in a recognised gap in the provision of detailed case studies documenting the practical implementation of sustainable remediation, and facilitate further refinement of guidance. Concawe commissioned CL:AIRE to a) gather, prepare and publish ten European case studies that demonstrate sustainable remediation techniques and technologies and b) provide an analysis of the case studies to identify key success factors. A cross-comparison analysis of the ten case studies has been carried out, seeking to help practitioners compare these case studies to their own projects. The cross-comparison analysis focused on the following attributes: site location and type of site (former use); saturated / unsaturated zone impact; targeted contaminants; risk drivers; envisaged land use; objectives for sustainability assessment; remediation options compared; stakeholder engagement; boundary conditions; scope (environmental, economic, social); key constraints / opportunities; and assessment type (qualitative, semi-quantitative etc). Based on this analysis and recently published guidance, a practical approach for deploying sustainable remediation on operational sites has been proposed. Working with a risk-based conceptual site model, effective engagement with stakeholders and a sound understanding of sustainable remediation practices are seen as key success factors from these case studies. 

The report was prepared by Rob Sweeney and Nicola Harries, CL:AIRE and Paul Bardos, r3 Environmental Technology Ltd.

The report is available to download on the Concawe website at www.concawe.eu and ten CL:AIRE Concawe Case Study Bulletins are available to download individually at www.claire.co.uk/concawe.