| Date | 4 July 2006 |
| Location | England, United Kingdom |
| Caused by | Procedural ambiguities in SI 2000/227 identified during DEFRA consultation, 2004 |
| Resulted in | Revised contaminated land designation, notification, and remediation notice procedures; superseded by Contaminated Land (England) Regulations 2012 |
| Parties | Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) · Environment Agency · Local Government Association · National Contaminated Land Forum |
| Lead figures | Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Chief Executive, Environment Agency |
The Contaminated Land Regulations 2006 were a statutory instrument enacted on 4 July 2006 in the United Kingdom, amending and consolidating the framework established under Part IIA of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. The regulations introduced revised procedures for the identification, notification, and remediation of contaminated land sites, and assigned expanded enforcement duties to local authorities and the Environment Agency across England.
Part IIA of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 had established the primary legislative framework for contaminated land in England, requiring local authorities to inspect their areas and identify land where significant harm was being caused, or where there was a significant possibility of such harm occurring. By the early 2000s, it had become apparent to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) that the original 2000 regulations, enacted under statutory instrument SI 2000/227, contained procedural ambiguities regarding the designation of "special sites" — land classified as sufficiently hazardous to fall under the direct regulatory authority of the Environment Agency rather than local councils. A consultation paper issued in November 2004 identified seventeen areas of interpretive inconsistency, prompting a formal review process that concluded in March 2006. The 2006 regulations were laid before Parliament on 21 April 2006 and came into force on 4 July 2006 as Statutory Instrument SI 2006/1380.
The regulations amended five principal provisions of SI 2000/227 and introduced three new schedules governing the remediation notice procedure. Under the revised framework, local authorities were required to serve written notice of contaminated land designation within 21 days of formal identification, a reduction from the previous 28-day period. The regulations also clarified the definition of "controlled waters" in relation to contaminated land, aligning it with the terminology adopted in the Water Framework Directive as transposed into English law.
### Designation of Special Sites
Schedule 1 of the 2006 regulations revised the criteria by which land was to be designated a "special site," adding two new categories: land in which contamination derived from the manufacture or processing of tributyltin compounds, and land formerly used for the bulk storage of aviation fuel manufactured before 1 January 1985. The Environment Agency was required to maintain a public register of all special sites designated under the amended Schedule 1, updated quarterly.
### Remediation Notices
The regulations introduced a standardised remediation notice form — Form CL/R/06 — which local authorities were required to use in all written communications with appropriate persons. The form included a mandatory section requiring the issuing authority to specify, in plain English, the nature of the significant harm identified and the remediation action required. Authorities that failed to use Form CL/R/06 after 1 January 2007 were subject to a civil penalty of up to £2,500 per notice, enforceable by the Secretary of State.
### Charging Notices
The 2006 regulations also amended the charging notice provisions, confirming that local authorities could register a charge on the title of a property where remediation costs had been met from public funds and were to be recovered from the owner. The charge was registrable against the property at the Land Registry under the Land Charges Act 1972, and took precedence over all subsequent mortgage advances but not over existing registered charges — a hierarchy that had not been explicitly stated in the 2000 regulations and had resulted in at least four disputed county court judgments between 2001 and 2005, the most significant of which was Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council v. Partridge [2004] EWHC 1122 (Admin).
The regulations were broadly welcomed by the Local Government Association and the National Contaminated Land Forum, both of which had submitted evidence during the 2004 consultation. The Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management issued a technical guidance note — CIWEM TGN 14 — in September 2006 advising member organisations on the practical implementation of the revised special site criteria. The Environment Agency published its own operational guidance, "Contaminated Land: Implementation of Part IIA — Updated Procedures," in November 2006. Some local authority officers expressed concern that the 21-day notification window was insufficient for smaller councils with limited environmental health capacity, and the Local Government Chronicle reported in August 2006 that fourteen district councils had written to DEFRA requesting a discretionary extension.
The 2006 regulations remained in force until they were superseded by the Contaminated Land (England) Regulations 2006, which came into force on 6 April 2012 following a further consolidation exercise and the publication of the statutory guidance document "Environmental Protection Act 1990: Part 2A — Statutory Guidance on Contaminated Land" by DEFRA in April 2012. The 2012 regulations revoked SI 2006/1380 in its entirety, though the charging notice hierarchy established in 2006 was retained verbatim in Schedule 3 of the replacement instrument. The Sandwell v. Partridge principle was codified in the 2012 statutory guidance at paragraph D.74, confirming its status as settled authority on the priority of remediation charges.
The Contaminated Land Regulations 2006 were referenced in a 2009 episode of the BBC local government drama series *Hardwick Lane*, in which a fictional district council officer struggles to serve a compliant remediation notice under Form CL/R/06 within the statutory 21-day window. The series' production team acknowledged in a 2009 interview with *The Stage* that the storyline had been drawn directly from accounts provided by serving environmental health officers in the West Midlands. The regulations were also cited in a 2011 undergraduate environmental law moot problem set by the University of Exeter Law School, which asked students to advise on the priority of a charging notice against a mortgaged brownfield site in Coventry.