A great deal of contaminated land related issues are managed within the UK by pollution control and environmental protection related legislation. The main statutes are the EPA 1990 and the Environmental Protection (Prescribed Processes and Substances) Regulations 1991, as amended. Other statutes are COPA 1974 and the Derelict Land Act 1982.

Part I of EPA 1990 covers the prescribed processes through the Integrated Pollution Control regime, (soon to become Integrated Pollution Prevention Control-IPPC). This is aimed at controlling and regulating the release of prescribed substances to air water and land, and has been covered in more detailed in an earlier unit. The lists of such substances are included within the Environmental Protection (prescribed processes and substances) Regulations 1991, in which schedule 6 is most applicable here as it covers releases to land.

Part II of EPA 1990, which mainly covers duty of care on all waste producers (see the previous section on waste) it is also applicable to contaminated land in that it covers landfill sites and other sites where waste is disposed of. Under section.59 of EPA 1990, waste producers are charged with the responsibility of cleaning up unauthorised deposits of waste. The main part of the legislation relating to contaminated land is contained within Part IIA of EPA 1990, and focused upon later.

Part III of EPA 1990 incorporates the statutory nuisance provisions that have already been mentioned. It is possible for statutory nuisance to be used in the remediation of contaminated land- an Abatement notice could be served by the authorities connected with any deposits on land which may adversely affect the health of the public or act as a nuisance. Such powers in dealing with contaminated sites are likely to become lapsed by the new regime.

Government policy on derelict land, a great deal of which is also classed as contaminated, is built upon the derelict Land Act 1982 and from DETR reviews, grant aid schemes and Select Committee findings. Currently, the government has not devised a national remediation scheme for contaminated and derelict sites, and relies mainly upon the IPC regulation of prescribed processes and the control and identification of local authorities of contaminated sites instead.