Risky Land and Affordable Housing .. Really??

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I have been doing a little research on the woodland area over the last week. As far as we know it has always been open space land, it was owned by the Vicarage on Leafy Lane from the 1900s until the 1950s; the Council purchased the land a little later as shown in the land registry.

As you may know Heanor is classed as high risk coal mining area with coal workings dating back a few hundred years!  This high risk doesn’t  mean your houses will sink though, if your property is of a certain age, movement should have settled well before now.

The Leafy Lane woodland has a few known coal seams, outcrops and possible shallow workings, not sure what this all means but it sounds interesting.

I also found out that due to the historic activity of the land, intrusive coal mining surveys would need to be done.

Intrusive Coal Mining surveys comes at public risk as it involves drilling boreholes into coal seams. The risk is a gas leak or combustable gas from the mines; if it goes wrong it can leak into the wider public area such as homes; there is also a risk to the stability of the ground around it.. E.g trees and back gardens.

In regards to the trees it makes me wonder if they would need to be cleared to perform land surveys? But I don’t have an answer for this.

Obviously developers can’t just randomly drill holes, these types of workings are subject to desktop surveys and permission from the coal authority first who will assess the risk.

There is always a risk with any development in high risk areas Including building extensions, however, in my opinion these risks are usually minimal as the land has already been worked on. This development would be on newly worked land which has trees and is already at risk from ground heave should roots be removed.

While apparently any land is workable to developers, it is my oppinion that any risk to ground movement and gas is still a big risk to the public and nearby residential properties! No amount of indemnity will make the public feel better should parts of their home or garden collapse or be subject to a gas leak.

I also wonder how costly all this would be too.. surely any land that is too expensive to work on would mean unaffordable housing not affordable housing... Is it really a viable option for affordable housing? Surely, there are more appropriate sites to use.

As I say, this is only my opinion as I don’t know a lot about development or mines but it certainly sounds interesting, costly and risky to me...

Disclaimer: The attached photo is a standard copy of a coal report for all high risk areas. Not an AVBC document.