This page contains information on how to apply for funding to investigate and/or remediate contaminated land.
The Environment Agency runs the Contaminated Land Capital Projects Programme to help local authorities in England cover the capital cost of implementing the contaminated land regime under Part 2A of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. Defra provides the funding for this work.
The Programme was previously administered by Defra, and we provided technical input. We became responsible for running the Programme in July 2010.
Purpose
The Programme funds two types of work:
- intrusive site investigations, which aim to find out whether a site is contaminated and, if so, to inform how it should be remediated
- site remediations, which aim to ensure that contamination at a site will no longer pose a significant risk to people or the environment
Over the last 10 years the Programme has funded more than 1,100 projects across England, protecting people, homes and the environment.
How it works
The Programme works as follows:
A local authority applies to the Environment Agency for funding, explaining what a proposed project would involve, why they think it’s necessary, and how much money it needs.
- We assess the proposed project against technical merit and value for money principles, adjusting proposed work and costs if necessary.
- We also give the application a priority score based on the risk to human health and scale of environmental impacts.
- We decide which projects to approve, using priority scoring to sift bids if we need to.
The local authority does the work, and submits claims for payment either once the works are complete or on an interim basis as the works are being carried out.
Amount of funding available
From 1 April 2011 the Local Authority Contaminated Land Capital Projects Programme was combined with our own capital projects programme for special sites, with all funding coming out of a single ‘pot’. The combined budget for 2011/12 is £4.35m.
The bid window was open from 8 April until 27 May 2011 and we received 96 bids in total. Our summary document gives a breakdown of what type of projects the bids were for, what proportion met the eligibility and value for money criteria, and which projects were funded after prioritisation:
All local authorities who applied have now received their letter explaining the outcome of their bid. Once the local authorities have completed their tendering exercises, we will publish the grant determination. This shows the breakdown of how much money was approved for each successful local authority.
The report below summarises how much money Local Authorities have been offered since the programme began. It also shows more detailed information from 2006 onwards, when the programme changed to Capital Grants, including how many bids were received each year and for what type of work (investigation or remediation).
The formal Grant Determination document below sets out the maximum amount of grant awarded to successful local authorities, together with the Terms and Conditions of that grant.
Documents
The Grant Guidance includes further detail on this year’s arrangements, highlighting the changes from last year. It also covers the eligibility and prioritisation criteria.
The prioritisation tool is a pdf version of the spreadsheet that our technical assessors use to prioritise bids. The financial aspects of the funding, including how grants are paid, is explained in the Grant Memorandum. This covers all the Local Authority grants that the Environment Agency administer and is available on the Local authority and internal drainage board funding page.
Forms
The application forms are very similar to before. Forms CL1 - CL3 are for new bids only, CL4 - CL6 can be used for existing projects as well.
Queries and completed forms should be sent to our dedicated email account:
