Funding for land clean-up

More than £1 million has been secured to help clean up land in a Shropshire village which has been contaminated with lead and arsenic.

The £1.3 million Defra grant to help get rid of contaminated soil in Pontesbury, near Shrewsbury, was confirmed yesterday.

In 2006 an examination of the former lead smelting works in the village’s Minsterley Road confirmed the land needed to be dealt with as contaminated. As a result a clean-up project worth an estimated £1.5 million will need to take place.

Last night Shrewsbury and Atcham borough councillors were told in a report raised as an emergency item that the Defra grant was secured but the council would need to find £200,000 to carry out the work.

They agreed to finance the money from capital funds, ask Enviros Consulting to draw up detail designs for the work and later go out to tender for the scheme and to carry out remediation work, which has already been proposed. They also approved recommendations to provide a 100 per cent waiver of the costs for all affected homes.

Some councillors, including Danny Moore, had raised concerns that the report only came to them at the “11th hour” before the meeting began.

He called for the item to be withdrawn and dealt with at a special meeting. But councillors voted 21 to 11 in favour of a substanted motion for the council to pay the remaining money.