[16 October, London] Ruth Kettle-Frisby, a Havering resident and co-founder of Clear the Air in Havering, a local environmental group founded by three local mums, has issued a legal claim challenging Havering Council’s lack of action over an illegal landfill site at Launders Lane in Rainham, which is affecting air quality and local residents’ lives.
Constantly smouldering underground fires coming from the illegal landfill at Launders Lane in Rainham cause air pollution all year round. During the summer, the site regularly catches fire presenting significant unquantified, unprotected health and safety risks both to firefighters who are unable to access the fires and to local residents, workers and visitors. Residents say that local GPs attribute the high levels of respiratory and lung diseases in the area to the landfill site. There are also concerns about the surface water runoff from it.
There are two schools close to the site, both of which have been affected by smoke coming from it, and residents often have to stay indoors with the windows closed to try and protect themselves. The site is also classified as one of the highest-emitting methane sites in the UK. Methane can result in poor air quality by contributing to the formation of ground level ozone and particulate pollution. Exposure to ozone and particulate pollution damages airways, aggravates lung diseases, causes asthma attacks, increases rates of preterm birth, cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, and heightens stroke risk.
Havering Council decided in July 2024 not to designate the landfill as contaminated land. When councils make these decisions, they are obliged by law to take certain things into account, including whether the site causes or is likely to cause significant harm to health.
The claim has received support from Law for Change, a fund focused on access to justice for impact cases and Ruth and Clear the Air in Havering have also raised funds via a CrowdJustice campaign to begin the judicial review of the council's decision.
If the landfill is legally designated to be contaminated land, then the council and the Environment Agency will have specific legal duties to ensure the site is cleaned up. They will be required to serve a notice on the person responsible requiring them to remediate the land. Most importantly, if the relevant person can't or won't clean up the land, the council can clean up the land themselves, and recoup as much of its costs as it can afterwards. It can also prosecute or commence civil proceedings against the person responsible – including holding company directors personally liable.
This is particularly relevant now, because the council had issued an abatement notice, which, if pursued, would also have given them limited powers to intervene on site if they had followed through with it. Instead, faced with an appeal from the landowner, the council withdrew the abatement notice, instead accepting verbal commitments from the landowner. If the landowners fails to make good on those commitments, the council has no redress and no means to force the landowner to take action.
Ruth Kettle-Frisby commented:
“Ever since I found out about this appalling situation in Launders Lane, my heart has gone out to my neighbouring residents in Rainham. I have done everything I can to reach out to find a way of expediting a solution to putting out the fires in order to protect Rainham children who deserve to breathe clean air as much as any other child.
“After years of neglect, while the council and landowner have batted responsibility back and forth, issuing this claim is a tremendous step forward. The council will not be able to ignore this legal challenge and must face up to the reality of this dire situation and take responsibility where it’s due.
“If our claim is successful, the council will have to remake their decision on whether the land is contaminated or not based on a much more thorough and comprehensive assessment of the evidence and risks of the toxic air pollution from the fires to the health and safety of local residents based on correct data.
“Both I and the Clear the Air in Havering action group are extremely grateful for the donations made to our CrowdJustice page, and to Law for Change for their support, which allowed us to raise enough funds to progress this claim. This action has been a last resort for us, as residents of Rainham have been trying tirelessly to resolve this issue with the council and landowner for decades, to no avail.
“Rainham is one of the most deprived areas of London and is a dumping ground for developments such as quarries that directly and indirectly pollute the air, however it is my conviction that clean air should be a human right; not a privilege that is dependent on where you live. Rainham children - especially those with existing health conditions and disabilities - are living at the sharp end of this crisis.
“Rainham residents deserve justice and they are the reason I have issued the claim; they have suffered for too long and deserve to play outside without feeling that their throats are on fire.”
Emily Nicholson, partner at law firm Mishcon de Reya which is working with Clear The Air In Havering in their legal action, said:
“We are very pleased that the funds were raised to cover the statutory legal costs so that this case can proceed, and the council be held to account for their decision-making. Particular thanks goes to the residents of Rainham who have so generously supported the claim through Crowdjustice and to Law for Change, which is showing once again what an impact it can have on access to justice.
“We believe that there are strong grounds to challenge the council’s decision not to designate the land as contaminated: that the council failed to take into account a number of significant factors, relied on flawed data and inconclusive evidence and didn’t properly consider the impact on the physical and mental health of local residents.
“It is clear that without this legal action the situation would not change. Only last month the council withdrew an abatement notice against the landowner of the site, citing a new verbal agreement that the landowner would take some unspecified steps to seek to prevent the fires before April 2025. As it is understood, the council and residents have no means to enforce this agreement, so if the steps taken are not sufficient to stop the fires then the community is back where it started once more, and facing yet another summer of fires on the site.”