Community group launches legal action against Havering Council over toxic illegal landfill site at Launders Lane
Clear The Air In Havering, a local environmental group founded by three local mums, is 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.
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.
Methane, a potent short-lived climate pollutant, is responsible for a significant portion of global warming, contributing 0.51°C of the 1.06°C warming observed from 2010-2019. Although it has a shorter atmospheric lifespan than CO2, methane is 80 times more effective at trapping heat over 20 years. Methane also contributes to harmful tropospheric ozone formation, leading to health risks and crop damage. Incomplete methane combustion releases toxic substances like carbon monoxide and benzene. Soil investigations found high methane levels, raising concerns about flammability and potential fires. The Council has been criticised for failing to adequately assess or mitigate the health risks from methane emissions and fires at the site, despite expert recommendations for monitoring and securing the area.
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 group has started a Crowdjustice campaign to help fund an application for a judicial review of the council's recent 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 step in and 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.
Read more in the press release by Mishcon de Reya here.
Margherita Cornaglia is instructed by Mishcon de Reya. For her previous involvement in strategic litigation concerning methane emissions, see here.
