At the National Brownfield Conference held in London on 4 March 2008, the Government delivered its formal response to the National Brownfield Strategy recommendations, submitted by English Partnerships in May last year. In the Foreword to the response document the Housing Minister, Caroline Flint MP, stated: “The re-use of Brownfield land lies at the heart of a wide range of Government policies and English Partnerships’ work in developing a National Brownfield Strategy is an important step towards achieving our ambitious targets for housing growth……and for achieving more sustainable patterns of development.”

The National Brownfield Strategy is based on a set of ‘over-arching principles’, which should be taken into account whenever the redevelopment or reuse of brownfield land is being considered.

With a Budget day remembered more for the cancelled day’s racing at Cheltenham than for the budget content itself there was the inevitable air of disappointment in a budget that failed to deliver any real substance beyond what had already been widely consulted on. The only three points of note were:

• The landfill tax exemption for waste from contaminated land will be phased out and withdrawn completely by 1 April 2012;
• Effective of 1 April 2009, Land Remediation Relief will be extended to long-term derelict land;
• Land Remediation Relief will also be extended to specifically include the removal of Japanese knotweed (excluding removal to landfill), also from 1 April 2009.