Environmental Reports - Contamination Concerns

se2020

Trying to purchase a house with some land.
The land is one paddock/field that is currently agricultural. 

We were aware that the land was previously an open stone quarry and has been infilled (some time in the 1950's)

Our solicitors searches have come back with "possible contamination - further action required"

Our solicitor said we would require an indemnity policy and the mortgage was approved and offered on that basis.

The solicitor's are now saying they are not able to source an indemnity policy as the land is 'commercial' and we are taking a residential mortgage and they are convinced our mortgage offer will be withdrawn when they tell this to the lender.

They have suggested the following options:

1, We pay one of the senior commercial solicitors in the practice £450/hr to search for a suitable indemnity policy. 

2, pay £1200 for an initial 'potential contamination' search. This is a paper-based search to just determine if a further, stage 2, investigation is required.  A stage 2 investigation involves digging holes and taking samples.  A quote for the cost of the stage 2 will be given as part of the stage 1. 
I would guess it's expensive!


As the rest of the transaction is also looking a bit fraught I am wondering if I can do any of this myself?

1, where would I look for a suitable indemnity policy? 

2, where have the results from the environmental searches come from?
My solicitor is unable to give me any other details apart from 'it says possible contamination'
If these results have come from (for example) the local council,  there must be some way I can look them up and see if there are any more details? 
I'm thinking,  if I can find out more details then I would at least know if it's worth paying for further surveys.  Ie, if I find that it was infilled with radioactive waste, its probably not worth going further!

I guess my concern is, old maps show a quarry, new maps don't. It could have been filled with anything in-between?

elsien

I would certainly check with the local council.
I live near an old battery factory and was told not to grow food  directly in the ground due to concerns about heavy metal contamination.

Council later did a follow-up survey in the gardens of a representative portion of houses in the area which effectively gave the all clear.

Otherwise are there not any other house is this in a similar situation - what did they do? What about the seller of the house – if it’s going to be a common problem, they need to help sort it out if they want to sell their house; otherwise are there other mortgage companies for who this would be less of an issue?

Section62

se2020 said:

Trying to purchase a house with some land.
The land is one paddock/field that is currently agricultural. 

We were aware that the land was previously an open stone quarry and has been infilled (some time in the 1950's)

Our solicitors searches have come back with "possible contamination - further action required"

Our solicitor said we would require an indemnity policy and the mortgage was approved and offered on that basis.

The solicitor's are now saying they are not able to source an indemnity policy as the land is 'commercial' and we are taking a residential mortgage and they are convinced our mortgage offer will be withdrawn when they tell this to the lender.
....

I don't really understand why they are advising you to spend more money seeking indemnity policies or reassurance about the land if they are certain your mortgage offer will be withdrawn?  Surely the first step would be ensuring you'll be able to get a mortgage on a property which includes this 'commercial' land?

There may be more specific information in your case, but the general approach to broad-brush contamination studies is to identify locations where filling has taken place, work out the date range the site was active, then guess at the likely wastes that may have been dumped in that general area around that time.  The guesses will be on the side of caution - assuming worst cases.  Your £1200 would effectively pay for someone to look more closely at the paper evidence to try to narrow down the potential contaminants... but nobody can be sure until digging is done.

Is there any way you'd be able to buy the residential property and buy the agricultural land as a separate but linked arrangement?  The mortgage company would still need to know you are buying the agricultural land, but may be less interested if it isn't part of the property the mortgage is being secured on.