§ Ms EllmanTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what financial support he is giving in the current year to English local authorities and to the Environment Agency to meet capital costs of site investigation and remediation of contaminated land. [3183]
§ Angela EagleThe Department of the Environment's Contaminated Land Supplementary Credit Approval programme, which has a budget of £14 million in the current financial year, provides support for capital costs incurred by English local authorities where they are responsible for the investigation or remediation of contaminated land. The programme also is able to provide support, in the form of additional grant-in-aid, to the Environment Agency where it is carrying out works to deal with water pollution from contaminated land.
The programme is aimed at tackling problems on sites owned by local authorities or those where authorities or the Environment Agency have responsibility to take action and cannot recover their costs from third parties. The Department operates an assessment and prioritisation procedure to ensure that the available funding goes to projects representing the greatest threat to health or the environment.
Some authorities have already been notified of support, where this is to meet on-going contractual commitments for projects funded in previous years. The Department of the Environment has today written to local authorities with successful bids for new projects and to the Environment Agency, notifying them of the financial allocations which are being made.
The following table sets out the allocations which have been made for the current financial year.
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Local Authority Number of sites Total allocation (£) Bassetlaw DC 1 120,000 Birmingham City 2 35,000 Blackburn and Darwen BC 2 20,000 Blackpool BC 1 1,000 Bradford MBC 1 30,000 Brighton and Hove C 1 30,000 Bury MBC 1 492,000 Cambridgeshire CC 2 89,000 Cheltenham BC 1 293,000 Cheshire CC 2 170,000 Chorley BC 3 22,000 Cornwall CC 2 42,000 Croydon LB 2 157,000 Cumbria CC 2 75,000 Darlington BC 1 279,000 Devon CC 2 445,000 Dudley MBC 4 193,000 Essex CC 2 410,000 Gateshead MBC 4 765,000 Greater Manchester WDA 1 99,000 Guildford BC 2 147,000 Hampshire CC 2 408,000 Hartlepool BC 1 9,000 Hereford and Worcester CC 2 91,000 Hounslow LB 5 313,000 Knowsley MBC 1 171,000 Leicester City 5 582,000 Leicestershire CC 1 880,000 Merseyside WDA 3 510,000 Middlesbrough BC 1 250,000
Local Authority Number of sites Total allocation (£) Newcastle City 1 56,000 Norfolk CC 2 188,000 Northamptonshire CC 2 675,000 North East Lincolnshire C 1 136,000 North Lincolnshire C 1 770,000 Northumberland CC 2 12,000 Norwich City 1 1,789,000 Nuneaton and Bedworth 3 90,000 Oldham MBC 1 10,000 Oxford City 1 1,271,000 Oxfordshire CC 1 5,000 Portsmouth City 4 163,000 Redbridge LB 1 22,000 Rotherham MBC 3 348,000 St. Helens MBC 1 23,000 Sandwell MBC 20 277,000 Sheffield City 1 559,000 Solihull MBC 1 535,000 Stafford BC 1 25,000 Stockton-on-Tees BC 1 12,000 Surrey CC 6 1,278,000 Tameside MBC 1 67,000 Three Rivers DC 1 4,000 Trafford MBC 3 77,000 Walsall MBC 3 205,000 Warwickshire CC 1 450,000 West Yorkshire WDA 6 651,000 Weymouth and Portland BC 1 750,000 Worcester City 1 26,000 Environment Agency 6 500,000 Note:
Total allocations include an over-programming margin against the total budget to allow for slippage in expenditure on individual projects.