"Failed" Environmental Search - what to do now??!

horsepills

We are in the process of buying the house we have rented for the last 5 years, but we have just received a letter from our solicitors saying:

"The Environmental Search has received a 'failed' result such that the Chartered Environmental Surveyor who has reviewed the information is not able to certify that the risk identified would not lead to the land being classified as 'contaminated land'. At this point, the search is not stating that the land is contaminated - only that there is a risk"...

It then goes on to state that we can either choose to do nothing, make enquiries to the local authority (at a cost of £100 +VAT to us) and/or pay for "indemnity insurance".....

HELP! I have no idea what the risks are and what to do next..... Any help would be gratefully received.

epz_2

i would do the local government search, odds are it will be something fixable like lead pipes or something nasty in the soil.

fact is you have lived there for 5 years, even if you werent buying i would think £100 is worth finding out what bad stuff you have been living with.

horsepills

Thanks. But the letter seems to say that there may be nothing wrong with the land/property - just that they couldn't find anything out.

epz_2

odds are they just couldnt find any previous uses for the land, basicly a lot of new builds were on brownfield sites with some pretty nasty stuff in the ground, up here i know of plenty of places that arsnic and worse were dumped into the soil.

probably they just want the council to check the records to find out what previous uses were and if they had permits to use special chemicals

horsepills

Thanks again. The house was built in 1850 though!

Woody69_2

The environmental search should give more information then this. This is just the summary on the first page. Ask to see the report, my solicitor sent me a copy of mine.

epz_2

horsepills wrote: »

Thanks again. The house was built in 1850 though!

lucky you, before they used aspestose as far as i can remember and before many of the really nasty pcb's etc got invented, also you know they used propper wood rather than the intensivly grown cr*p they get now.

lead paint and pipes are probably all you got to worry about, easy though not definate check for paint is to put your mobile near the walls and check the signal, lead forms a faraday cage blanketing out any signal.