HC Deb 17 January 2000 vol 342 cc247-8W
Mr. Llwyd

To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what proposals he has to provide funding for(a) enforcing and overseeing corrective action at leaking underground storage tank sites and (b) clean-ups (i) where the owner or operator is unknown, or is unwilling or unable to respond and (ii) which require emergency action. [104638]

Mr. Meacher

The main responsibilities for regulating underground storage tanks, including enforcing and overseeing corrective action when they are leaking, are held by the Environment Agency, the Health and Safety Executive and the petroleum licensing authorities. The legal powers available to these bodies, and the detailed allocation of responsibilities between them, varies according to what is stored in the tank and the type of pollution incident involved. The Environment Agency is funded through grant-in-aid paid by my department as well as by charges paid by those seeking permits and licences. The Health and Safety Executive is also funded through grant-in-aid as well as from charges for certain activities which are recovered from industry. The petroleum licensing authorities are part of local government, and as such are funded through a combination of council tax, non-domestic rates and revenue support grant paid by my Department.

In cases where leaks have occurred and clean-up action is necessary, responsibility for paying for the work generally falls on the owner or operator of the tank. Depending on what was stored in the tank, and the nature of the problems which the leak has caused, this responsibility may be enforced under a number of legal powers. These include the works notice system in sections 161–161D of the Water Resources Act 1991, under which the Environment Agency may itself carry out works in an emergency or where it appears after reasonable inquiry that no person can be found on whom to serve a works notice; the statutory nuisance regime in Part III of the Environmental Protection Act 1990; and the Groundwater Regulations 1998. These powers will be supplemented in April by a new regime for remediating contaminated land, under Part IIA of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 (which was inserted by section 57 of the Environment Act 1995). An additional £12 million per year has been added to Standard Spending Assessments for local authorities in England to support their role under the new contaminated land regime.

The Contaminated Land Supplementary Credit Approval programme also provides capital expenditure support for local authorities in England to deal with cases where land contamination is causing unacceptable risks to human health and the environment, and where no-one else can be made to pay for the necessary remediation. This could include circumstances where leaks have occurred from underground storage tanks. The total provision in the current financial year for this programme is £12.082 million. A further £1.958 million has been provided to the Environment Agency as additional grant-in-aid to support equivalent work it is carrying out.