It may be that you own a property and want to buy it and there is a notation in the land registry about pollution at the property. This may then look like this:
You may wish to have this pollution report removed from the land registry. For example, because the contaminated soil near your home has been remediated. But can you just get that deregistered/removed and if so, what do you have to do to do that?
In very many (perhaps most) cases, serious contamination that is the subject of a remediation decision has been remediated by excavating the soil about 1 meter deep and then pouring clean soil over it. That meter of clean soil is called a “living layer.
The problem is that the contamination remains. This is because it is more than 1 meter deep under that layer of clean soil (the living layer). The municipality or the environmental service (responsible for soil monitoring, among other things) may not then remove the registration of “contamination” from the land registry.
What actually happens then is that a “use restriction” is created on the property and the “severity and urgency” of the soil contamination is issued at the land registry. No worries, we’ll explain what this means and entails.
Use restriction
The moment a living layer of clean soil has been applied as a remediation measure, the intention is for the property owner not to simply dig, drill and remodel in that meter-deep safe clean soil. If it does, it can break the clean soil barrier and reopen the contaminated soil. Therefore, after such remediation, the property owner will be strictly prohibited from digging more than about 1 meter deep in the garden. We call this a “use restriction,” and this use restriction will be and remain registered in the land registry. The land registry is a public resource and anyone (including prospective home buyers) can see this information. However, you should actually see such a registration as something valuable. This is because you are thereby indicating that remediation has successfully taken place on the plot and therefore there is no longer any need for further soil testing or remediation.
Severity and urgency
What does happen after remediation by excavating and backfilling 1 meter deep soil is that the land registry is updated that the contamination is “no longer serious and urgent. In other words, ‘it’s there, namely 1 meter deep in the ground and, above all, don’t touch it, then we’ll like it’.
Remove the entire cadastral record of a contamination
If you want the entire cadastral record of contamination removed, you will have to be able to prove that ALL contamination has been remediated.
You must then first submit a remediation plan outlining how you plan to remediate the contamination. Upon completion of remediation, pit bottom and wall samples are taken to have to prove that the contamination is gone. Then you argue that it must meet the “remediation objective. After this, an evaluation report must be submitted (to the environmental department or municipality) and if the evaluation report shows sufficiently that the contamination is completely gone, then the entry can be removed from the land register.
Professional help needed
If you need help in getting a contamination endorsement removed from the land registry or for any other type of advice on (possible) contamination and/or remediation, we recommend the following. Engage an environmental research firm. These can help you with all such issues. We have several good environmental research firms sitting throughout the Netherlands. If you would like to get in touch with one of these consulting companies in your area, please fill out this form and we’ll put you in touch with them (free service from us).
Are you just looking for a good buying agent to guide you (further) through the purchase of a property you’ve been looking at. We are a nationwide buying agent, so we can help you throughout the Netherlands. Take feel free to contact with us or call us at 023-2052296.