Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment his Department has made of the effect of the withdrawal of Capital Grant funding for contaminated land remediation in 2017 on the development of (a) brownfield and (b) greenbelt sites.

No assessment has been made of the effect of the withdrawal of Capital Grant funding in 2017 for contaminated land remediation on brownfield and greenbelt sites.

It is the responsibility of local authorities to identify and prioritise contaminated land remediation where there is an unacceptable risk to health and the environment, as under Part 2A of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. This includes brownfield and greenbelt sites where there is an unacceptable risk from the current land use.