A recent Court of Appeal case, Powys County Council v Price and Hardwick, has addressed the issue of liability of successor public authorities under the UK contaminated land regime (Part 2A Environmental Protection Act 1990) (“Part 2A”).

The case related to a landfill site that had been operated by local authorities of the county of Powys until the early 1990s. It has subsequently been restored and returned to private landowners for agricultural use. Powys County Council (Powys) was created in 1994, and in 1996 it took over responsibility for a number of boroughs.

From 2001, Powys County Council carried out monitoring and treatment work at the site on the basis that it would be responsible under the Part 2A regime for any potential contamination caused by its predecessors. However, in 2015 Powys stopped all activity on the grounds that the 2007 case of R (National Gas Grid (formerly Transco plc)) v Environment Agency (“Transco”) meant it was not responsible for landfilling operations that has ceased prior to 1996.  In Transco, the UK House of Lords held that National Grid Gas (formerly Transco) – the privatised gas utility company that was a statutory successor to the publicly owned British Gas – was not liable under Part 2A for the acts of its predecessors. The rationale for this decision was that the statutory scheme of transfer did not specifically include such contingent/future liabilities.