Havering council takes legal advice over Arnolds Field fire hotspot

The entrance to Arnolds Field on Launder's Lane in 2022

A London borough council is taking legal advice on how to tackle a former landfill site that is a fire hotspot.

London Fire Brigade has responded to more than 70 incidents at Arnolds Field, in Rainham, since 2018.

In the summer, Havering council formed a working group with the Environment Agency, London Fire Brigade and MP John Cruddas to work out what could be done.

A council scrutiny meeting on Wednesday heard an external senior barrister had been consulted.

Havering council's director of policy, strategy and transformation, Sandy Hamberger, told the meeting the council had asked the barrister to outline what "legal options" were available, the Local Democracy Reporting Service reports.

She explained: "One is if we can get access, two is [which agency] has most powers, three is could we compulsory purchase the land and, if so, what would be the implications for trying to rectify the land?

"Any of those could be timely and costly."

Other actions recently agreed by the working group include commissioning Imperial College London to monitor the air quality around the site and "looking at" moving a fire hydrant nearby to help manage the fires.

In a report prepared for the committee, Ms Hamberger's advice to members was that options "may be limited and potentially expensive" due to the "complicated" history of ownership and legal action that had already taken place.

This includes 20 years of illegal dumping at the site and the discovery of its use as an underground cannabis factory in 2012 for which a previous owner was jailed for 12 years, the meeting heard.

The entrance to Arnolds Field as it looked in 2008

Ms Hamberger told the committee the land was assumed to be "toxic and dangerous" but said because it was privately owned the council "can't get access".

She said the process of taking enforcement action against each new owner was like "groundhog day".

During one large fire in July 2019, "specialist" machinery needed to be hired at a cost of £14,000 to the council and Environment Agency, the meeting was told.

Despite the ongoing dangers of fire and risks of air and waterway pollution, the Environment Agency says it has no legal power to take action against the current owner because Arnolds Field is not an "active waste site".

Previous owner jailed

The agency added: "We're currently not aware of any direct pollution to the watercourses."

Senior community development and resilience officer Jerry Haley told the meeting he had pieced together a "patchy" recent history of Arnolds Field.

The site was previously used for "mineral extraction" and, in 2000, the council granted permission for its owner to dispose of soil for a "community woodland" to grow on.

However, "unknown substances" were dumped there, eventually reaching heights "in excess of five metres" above what had been approved by Havering Council.

In 2004, the council issued an enforcement notice to then owner North London Developments Limited, which liquidated two years later after losing an appeal against the notice.

In 2012, a new owner was jailed for 12 years after police discovered a stash of assault rifles, shotguns, handguns and a cannabis factory in buried shipping containers, the committee heard.

Illegal waste disposal resumed at the site while that owner was in prison and, in 2019, three men were jailed for dumping "mixed waste" in a series of visits to the site five years earlier.

The BBC has been unable to establish who the current land owner is to be able to reach them for comment.

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