contamination survey Phase II - Can anyone write a Watching Brief?

[laurenco]

A condition of my planning permission is a Phase II land contamination report. Rather than an expensive report (I've been quoted thousands of pounds) the Environmental Protection Officer will accept bore holes and factual logs as long as I submit a Watching Brief. Begrudging paying any more fees, I want to do the Watching Brief myself, but does anyone know if the council will accept this?

[curlewhouse]

I know that for our archaeological "watching brief " it was plainly a ready made boilerplate document with our site details cut and pasted in by the archaeoligist.  But the various firms all quoted about the same amount for that part of the "work" & since they would be doing the watching brief there was no way around it as we had to have a qualified archaeologist on site (and the national park wanted to know his qualifications and had to agree he was acceptable before we could proceed!) so although the brief could pretty much have been copied from any other site it was useless without the archaeologist himself and of course they wouldn't work with someone else's.  I can't see the council accepting *your* say so that nothing untoward was found to be honest. Is there reason to suspect contamination in particular?

Edited April 14, 2018 by curlewhouse

[laurenco]

Thanks curlewhouse. I can understand the council requiring a Watching Brief by a qualified archaeologist in a national park, but this is a non-contentious house re-build, on a previously (pre-1970's) greenfield site. It's very strange. Even the soil borehole guy says he's never come across a watching brief on a job like this.

[Triassic]

On 12/04/2018 at 19:40, laurenco said:

A condition of my planning permission is a Phase II land contamination report. Rather than an expensive report (I've been quoted thousands of pounds) the Environmental Protection Officer will accept bore holes and factual logs as long as I submit a Watching Brief. Begrudging paying any more fees, I want to do the Watching Brief myself, but does anyone know if the council will accept this?

Did the Phase I report conclude that a Phase II ivestigation was required? If not, job done, no need for Phase II, other than tick a council officials box!

 

PS page 8 gives details of what is required for a watching breif

 

https://www.hackney.gov.uk/media/3231/CLS2-guidance-document/pdf/CLS2_Guidance_Notes

 

 

Edited April 19, 2018 by Triassic

[laurenco]

Amazing I'm going to look at the link now @Triassic

 

The Phase I was clean. She said that it was contradictory and even though it stressed no contamination and low risk, it advised further investigations may be beneficial. I think these surveys are worded cleverly to ensure they get repeat business!

[Triassic]

Go back and get the Phase I report sorted out, if they found nothing then nothing else needs to be done, end of! The report should say that and only that. Putting that it would be beneficial to carry out more work is only benifficial to them, more work, more income.