It is all in the soil

An interesting item on the BBC web site about an area just over the River Tyne from the site of what I call 'Battlefield':

Read more about it here.

I can not help recalling that a scheme to build flats – sorry! Apartments – on the former paint factory fell through because of concerns about the amount of (expensive) clean up required. Over many years of operation the whole site had become impregnated with toxic heavy metals associated with traditional paint making. The coincident 'crash' in the housing market was apparently not the main reason. Interesting, then, that the joint promoters of the current scheme, the University of Northumbria and Metnor Group plc, the well known industrial park developers, were not similarly 'concerned' six months after the apartments plans were dropped about building student accomodation on the as yet undecontaminated site ...

In actual fact, I see nothing very wrong in all of this, simply a telling lack of frankness or, if you prefer, 'transparency'. It somehow typifies the whole way the Council goes about it's business, an habitual lack of straight dealing with a long pedigree.


The outlook for student accomodation.