Contaminated land case study - Stratford, London

Residents of Coopers Walk, Stratford, finally had remediation works completed on their homes in 2009, after an historical contaminated land case had dragged on for over seven years.

Newham Council declared in 2002 that the land on which eight properties were built was contaminated. The land was previously used as a paint factory, before being converted into houses.

The residents’ plight made the headlines in 2006 when BBC1’s consumer rights programme, Watchdog, reported that naphthalene, used in dyes that make paint, had been discovered in the soil under the cellars of the properties. In large enough quantities, naphthalene is an extremely dangerous gas, and it was escaping into the basements and up through the concrete in sufficient levels to badly affect the health of some of the residents.

The announcement that London was to host the 2012 Olympic Games did even more to highlight the homeowners' predicament, as whilst the value of neighbouring properties rose sharply, the houses in Coopers Walk were rapidly declining in value.

The residents’ turmoil was finally ended when a remediation strategy was put into place that involved removing concrete floors from the cellars to extract the contaminated soil.

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