Radioactive Contaminated Land (Scotland) Regulations 2007: statutory guidance

ANNEX 1: Policy Regarding Radioactive Contaminated Land

Sustainable Development

Preventing new contamination

1 Radioactive contaminated land, like other types of contaminated land, is evidence of our failure in the past to move towards sustainable development. We must learn from that failure. The first priority of the Scottish Executive's policy on land contamination is therefore to prevent the creation of new contamination, primarily through the devolved controls within the regulatory regime of the Radioactive Substances Act 1993, as implemented by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency.

Interaction with other Regimes

2 There is a clear distinction between those dose limits to the public and to workers that are appropriate for intervention and those that are appropriate to future practices. Thus, even where, following investigation at a site, SEPA concludes that doses are such that a full range of remediation measures are not appropriate or justified, it could be that potential doses would warrant controls appropriate to a practice should there be future development at such a site. In those circumstances, SEPA should alert the relevant planning authority as to the result of its investigations and conclusions. The dose constraint appropriate to a practice is 0.3 mSv per annum.