Hundreds of houses and warehouses to be built near notorious toxic tar pits in Derbyshire

Plans from Harworth and Pegasus Group for 300 homes and 74 acres of warehouse and industrial space are set for approval on land north of Derby Road, Denby, on a site known as Cinderhill.

The site in question, between the A38 and Street Lane, is home to the Denby tar pits which are highly contaminated with hazardous substances following historic industrial use, before becoming a dumping ground for unwanted materials and objects.

Amber Valley Borough Council planning officials have recommended that the plans (filed in March) are approved at a meeting on Monday, June 10, with councillors to make the final decision.

The developers had said the scheme represents a £455 million investment in the area during construction and will create 1,500 new jobs on site.

They say that the project will include 60 affordable homes (20 per cent), below the number expected by the borough council for a scheme of this size (30 per cent), which would be 90 homes.

These plans follow a number of scrapped schemes for the Cinderhill site but this development’s key difference is that it would not seek to remediate the tar pits. Instead, they would be left intact and building work would take place around them.

Previous plans for 3,000 homes on the site had included a new junction off the A38 and the most recent scrapped scheme in 2019 had included 1,200 homes and 12 acres of employment space.

It had previously been stated by the developers that the construction of homes would help pay for the remediation of the tar pits, which would otherwise be too expensive.

The Environment Agency has said it is “disappointed” that the tar pit remediation has been dropped in this scheme, now set for approval.

It wrote: “Previous iterations of development proposals made by the applicant in this location had included the Cinderhill tar pit special site area, however, in the most recent proposal, this area is no longer included.

“The Environment Agency supports the regeneration/remediation of brownfield sites through the planning process, and therefore we have expressed our disappointment that the tar pit area is no longer included within the development boundary.

“We have not objected to the proposal as it is ultimately the applicant’s decision as to the extent of their development proposal.”

Under the current plans the tar pits would be fenced off but left in their current state and officials say this will be sufficient to stop further spread of contamination and hazardous impact on people.

Council officers write: “Although the tar pits are now excluded from the planning application site boundary, associated risks still need to be managed.

“Borehole testing (around the perimeter of the tar pits) have confirmed that there is no leaching of acid tars from the clay lined pits into the groundwater

“The tar pits comprise about 10 hectares. They are the result of previous activities in the 1960s and 1970s comprising the excavation of clay and the infilling of some of the resulting void with water materials including tars.

“These activities were carried out with the benefit of planning permission but the restoration requirement of the permission, including the capping of the pits in the early 1980s, was not carried out to a sufficient standard, resulting in tars seeping out at the surface. The area has been left in that condition for a number of years

“The Cinderhill tar pits site was determined by Amber Valley Borough Council as a ‘Special Site’ under Part IIA of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 in February 2007.”

More than 170 objection letters have been submitted to the borough council over the plans, along with opposition from the parish councils of Holbrook, Kilburn and Denby.

Holbrook Parish Council wrote: “The ecological danger of disturbance of the Cinderhill Tar Pits that would result during the construction, followed by continuous ground vibration from traffic that could potentially bring acid tar to the surface.

“The parish council has grave concerns about any possibility of material in the Cinderhill Tar Pits reaching the Bottle Brook.

“There would be an increased risk from the proposed development of run-off and surface water getting into the Bottle Brook via the decommissioned mine shafts and the polluted area of the Tar Pits.

“If any highly toxic material reached the Bottle Brook because of local flooding, it would pass to the River Derwent and to the River Trent.”

Kilburn Parish Council also objected based on the proximity of the development to the tar pits, while Denby Parish Council’s opposition focuses on the perceived lack of infrastructure to sustain the scheme.

It says traffic in the surrounding area already sees key routes at their capacity, with significant congestion, saying an A38 link road should be made mandatory if the scheme is approved.

Opposing residents detailed: “The proposed employment zone adjoining the A38 is not land that was reclaimed from opencast mining, it is currently greenfield grazed by sheep. These agricultural fields on either side of the A38 provide a vital buffer zone between Belper and Denby, which if built on, would eventually lead to urban sprawl.”

“Small villages are slowly being merged together which should be avoided at all costs.”

“Erecting a fence around the tarpits does not remediate them.”

“With previous attempts to get this site passed for building, Amber Valley Borough Council states that the remediation of the tar pits was going to be financed by the sale of houses. That seems to have been swept under the carpet now there is a fence put around the site.”

“If the tar pits are not expected to cause any problems over the design life of the development, which is possibly 50 or 100 years, then why did the developer not include them within the site in order to provide more confidence to the Denby residents that the developer will look after any issues connected with the tar pits?”

A statement on behalf of the developers details: “The development proposals presented are an exciting opportunity to deliver this long overdue allocation for employment led mixed mixed-use development, at a time when a boost to the economy could not be more needed.

“Harworth Group have spent years working on overcoming the viability and land remediation issues on this site so that new jobs can be created alongside new homes and new infrastructure.

“The scale of investment into the borough would be substantial and nationally significant.”