Appendix A

Shevington Parish Council

Report on the Meeting of the General Purposes Committee with Mr Duncan Fairwood, Principal Consultant, BAE Systems

3 November 2011

Mr Fairwood presented a brief introduction to the remediation process and then took questions from members of the General Purposes Committee and members of the public.

Introduction

The first planning application for remediation was based on the initial assessment of requirements for the site. These were re-assessed once work had started and further applications were made when issues were discovered. The issues were not found at the sampling stage. Since then some of the areas designated for remediation had been found to be larger than anticipated, others smaller. The site under focus at the moment contained a great deal of rubble.

Mr Fairwood’s Answers to Questions from Committee Members and Members of the Public present:

Q1 The entire site could not be turned over at the sample stage. BAE Systems had to work to agreed rules and a set process had to be followed. The level of knowledge increased as the work moved forward. Conditions were set for BAE – certain work had to be carried out and standards reached before the conditions could be considered to have been met and signed off.

Q2 BAE have to remove the old buildings on the site and so were removing the old railway lines at the same time. This work was being carried out for H&S reasons. Orica had asked BAE to design and agree a scheme of remediation of the site with Wigan Council. If people climbed over the fences and got hurt the liability would lie with BAE and Orica.

Q3 The buildings under discussion had been on the site a very long time and were very often not found on the drawings.

Q4 Unknown and unrecorded ordnance was one of the things that BAE were looking for.

Q5 The application to vary Condition 9 did not inform about the number of trees involved in the application or their quality or species because the LA had not asked for that information.

Q6 Trees needed to be removed as part of the remediation process to remove contamination.

Q6 This would be the last variance application. During the initial investigation things were discovered that no one knew about. The investigation had so far lasted 8 years. More things had been discovered with each visit.

Q7 If any more things were found after the remediation work had been completed and people had moved onto the site the liability would lie with BAE Systems. BAE were providing a warranty, initially to Orica and later to Taylor Wimpey. BAE employ former bomb disposal personnel to carry out the work.

Q8 The application to vary Condition 14 had been submitted by Taylor Wimpey. The application to vary Condition 9 would be the last one that BAE would be submitting. Representatives of BAE could not comment on the actions of third parties.

Q9 It was not possible to say how many trees had been removed to date.

Q10 Details and evidence of any HGV movements on and off the Orica site before 8 am were needed. The Site Manager had provided assurances that no HGVs arrive before 8 am. Something could only be done about access at unauthorised times if the appropriate information were provided.

Q11 Once material had been retrieved form the former landfill site the area would be re-profiled and re-planted. There would be no access to it. This was written into the Woodland Management Plan.

Q12 The requirement was that for every tree removed one had to be planted somewhere on the site. BAE were being guided by ecologists with regard to the trees that were to be planted and the locations in which they should be planted. The Woodland Trust were involved in this.

Q13 There was no truth to the story that 100 birds had been found dead on the site and had been removed in containers. The Site Manager had received a report that a dead deer’s head had been found on fields outside the perimeter of the site. He had searched for it but had found no trace of it. The deer had not been chased out. Deer are capable of jumping fences and it was impossible to keep them within the enclosed areas of the site. They were all over the Douglas Valley.

Q14 The diversion with regard to the footpath from Vicarage Lane to Crooke Village was only temporary. It could still be used by residents at weekends.

Q15 There had been a lot of discussion about the arbitrary removal and replacement of trees, but it was mostly secondary re-growths that were being removed.

KMP: 03.11.11

Page 1 of 2 Appendix A: Shevington PC General Purposes Meeting ~ 3 November 2011