Stockport Council News

The background to this is contamination experts funded by
Stockport Council claimed the part of the site where the school was going was
not contaminated. They said there were contamination hotspots at the other end
of the site and children could be protected from them by means of prickly
bushes! It turned out after they had to prove the site was not contamination for
a public inquiry, that the entire site was contaminated with the contaminants
being lead, arsenic and brown asbestos.

In 1974 the Council refused three planning applications for
housing for the site because the land was tipped and unsuitable for building. In
the early 1980s they set aside the site for a primary school. Although the
Executive Councillor responsible stated in the press recently they expected to
have found brown asbestos on the site, Stockport Council tried initially to do
no contamination investigations whatsoever; then they did one borehole when they
were made to by local people.

Greater Manchester Geological Unit Ground Investigation Report
dated 28th May 2006 states that this had been done in accordance with Bs10175.
BS 10175 (7.2) states sampling locations for contamination should not be moved
from a selected grid pattern, yet there were no contamination investigations
done under the full sized football pitch. Therefore, BS 10175 (7.2) was not
complied with.

BS 10175 (7.6.2.2) which Stockport Council and Greater Manchester
Geological Unit claim to have complied with in April 2006 states that potential
sources of contamination include past storage tanks, backfilled pits and waste
disposal areas and mean that sampling points should be located at equal spacing
and increasing distance from the centre. This simply wasn’t done.

In the early 1980s on a sister Jackson’s Brickyards site opened in
1922, like the Harcourt Street site, with the same layout and planning and
tipping history, they did more contamination investigations on a regular grid
pattern for just warehouses than they did in 2006 for this 550 pupil primary
school. The 1982 warehouses were not going directly over the old tip. This
school is. Why would the safety standards be better 30 years ago than
now?

In a memo written by Stockport Council’s Environmental Health
Officer referring to the former Jackson’s Brickyard sister site at Adswood he
states:- “If a venting point was driven though an area of asbestos there would
be the potential for asbestos fibres to be released on to the development. No
lower threshold exists for certain types of asbestos, hence a serious health
risk would occur if even one fibre of asbestos were to be released during the
venting of the gas”.

The warehousing at the Bredbury former Jackson’s Brickyards, where
they did more investigations 30 years ago than they did for this school in 2006,
is not even directly over the old tipped waste – the new school is directly over
the old tip.

Stockport Council is insisting that all questions regarding this
issue are vexatious, yet they tried to do no contamination investigations,
knowing full well, as Councillor Mark Weldon admitted in the Manchester
Evening News, that the site was likely to be contaminated with brown asbestos.
Councillor Weldon even had a photo-opportunity recently with young children
sitting on the contaminated land whilst he dug the first sod of earth from the
site with a shovel.