The Waste and Contaminated Land (Northern Ireland) Order 1997

Special sites

62.—(1) If, in a case where a district council has served a remediation notice, the contaminated land in question becomes a special site, the Department may adopt the remediation notice and, if it does so,—

(a) it shall give notice of its decision to adopt the remediation notice to the appropriate person and to the district council;

(b) the remediation notice shall have effect, as from the time at which the Department decides to adopt it, as a remediation notice given by the Department; and

(c) the validity of the remediation notice shall not be affected by—

(i) the contaminated land having become a special site;

(ii) the adoption of the remediation notice by the Department; or

(iii) anything in sub-paragraph (b).

(2) Where a district council has, by virtue of Article 60, begun to do any thing, or any series of things, by way of remediation—

(a) the council may continue doing that thing, or that series of things, by virtue of that Article, notwithstanding that the contaminated land in question becomes a special site; and

(b) Article 61 shall apply in relation to the reasonable cost incurred by the council in doing that thing or those things as if that council were the enforcing authority.

(3) If and so long as any land is a special site, the Department may from time to time inspect that land for the purpose of keeping its condition under review.

(4) If it appears to the Department that a special site is no longer land which is required to be designated as such a site, the Department may give notice to the district council in whose district the site is situated, terminating the designation of the land in question as a special site as from such date as may be specified in the notice.