‘Opencast’ Farm Gets HBPW Greenlight

A farm which was surrounded by opencast mining has been given the green light as a residential development site following various assessments, including a Phase II ground investigation, by HBPW’s Geoenvironmental Engineer, Jay Fox.

Royds Green Farm near Rothwell in Leeds, had been earmarked for approximately three to four properties. However, because of the historical open casting that had taken place in the area over the years – and the previous agricultural use – Doncaster architects, Building Link Design, asked HBPW to survey the area to help discharge planning conditions placed on the site.

“The Conditions related to contaminated land and, as part of the ground investigations, I had to look for possible risks to the development from both contaminated land and any hazardous ground gas from the old workings, in order to formulate a remediation strategy for the site,” said Jay.

The investigation discovered that near surface soil in parts of the site, was made up of ash which had elevated concentrations of heavy metals and PAH’s, which would be harmful to health. No harmful gases were found.

“I specified a simple engineering solution whereby the developers were advised to introduce half a meter of clean soil to the affected areas either by digging out the contaminated soil and replacing it with clean soil and filling in, or simply covering over the contaminated soil.”

A remediation strategy has now been submitted to Leeds City Council.