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The landfill site where vast amounts of Corby’s toxic waste have been buried, may be leaking, uncovered documents suggest.

For several decades former iron ore site Deene Quarry site was the dumping ground for by-product from Corby’s steel industry, with millions of gallons of toxic slurry, slag and industrial chemicals discarded at the former quarry site, creating huge toxic lagoons often littered with empty chemical drums.

The site was cleaned up in the 1980s and 1990s, after the former Corby District Council decided to try and turn around the fortunes of the town after steelmaking stopped, and transform the huge area (now known as Willowbrook North) into a new industrial complex.

But the clean up operation, which was the biggest in Europe and funded by millions of UK government and European funding was mismanaged, with a landmark legal case about birth defects in 2009 finding that there was a ‘dig and dump’ policy, that safety regulations were not followed and toxic pollutants that were being transported on open trucks escaped into the atmosphere and were ingested by the pregnant mothers.

Now, thirty years after Deene Quarry was capped off, there are fears it is leaking. The landfill site is the responsibility of the local authority (now North Northamptonshire Council) and is regulated by the Environment Agency (EA). Over the past few years there have been suspicions the site has been leaking onto nearby Gretton Brook Road and into the brook that runs alongside it (which gives the road its name) with reports of the brook turning different colours on occasions.

Documents from a meeting convened by Gretton Parish Council in January last year, which have been unearthed by a campaigner, show the concerns about the landfills at Deene Quarry are well founded. In 2001 Rockingham Motor Speedway was built on the North East quarter of the site. The speedway was not a success and in 2021 the site was acquired by the Constellation Automotive Group for £80m. The company has been contacted for comment.

The council report says:

“There are still historic open landfills around the speedway (referred to as Deene quarry). Water from the open landfill underneath Rockingham Speedway is pooling by the side of Gretton Brook Road. The installations Team at the Environment Agency is currently in discussions with the technical groundwater team at NNC and NNC (responsible for the open landfill site). Historically Anglian Water went to assess the sites at Rockingham Speedway, attenuation ponds were assessed and cleared. This suggests that groundwater levels have risen and are pushing up historic contamination in the ground and it is leaking onto the road. The Environment Agency is currently discussing the permits granted to NNC at this site.”

Water testing organised by Corby MP Lee Barron’s office in conjunction with environmental charity Earthwatch found heavy metals in the water, including cadmium, a highly toxic metal which can cross the placenta and cause birth defects. There were cadmium hotspots around the speedway site.

NN Journal contacted the Environment Agency about the leak concerns and it said:

“Pollution in Gretton Brook comes from many sources. We recognise the concerns raised and understand how important it is for residents to feel confident in the quality of their local environment.

“We are working with North Northants Council to assess any potential link between activities regulated under their environment permit at Deene Quarry and possible contamination.

“This work is ongoing, and we remain committed to mitigating any potential risk.”

The agency says it has offered to join a working group with the local authority and Lee Barron MP to ‘examine the range of issues’. It said it is investigating a pollution report on Gretton Brook, with samples from an onsite assessment going for further testing.

The local campaigner

Former Corby town and Gretton Parish councillor Rob Newby has been concerned about the situation for a number of years. He has constantly monitored the Gretton Brook at the location where the road from Gretton village joins with the Gretton Brook Road. He has sent countless emails and made reports to Anglian Water, Tata Steel (which owns land nearby) the EA, the council and the town council to try and get answers.

The road has been closed on a number of occasions due to flooding issues.

He said:

“Nobody has taken charge of the situation which remains unresolved despite fruitless efforts to pay lip service to the ongoing problem.”

At a parish council meeting last Monday he said the water pooling onto the side of the road was foul smelling.

He said:

“This [issue] is going on and on. Between the council and the environment agency it is going round in circles. Someone has to pick this up as it is becoming a joke.”

The original legal firm is back on the case

Since Corby’s toxic waste legacy was brought to the fore once again with the airing of Netflix drama Toxic Town, there have been concerns that the waste is still causing issues today. Families have concerns about recent birth defects, childhood and adult cancers and other rare illnesses. The local authority’s director of public health commissioned a report, which found childhood cancer rates were no higher in Corby. However, as with the original group of claimants, the health report is being questioned.

There are also now wider concerns about where all the toxic waste went to. It was supposed to be buried in Deene Quarry, but documents from the original court case, show that the contractor Noone and McGowan who had the 1996 contract to clean up the Soothills area (now the Corby Tesco site at St James) took the waste to other parts of Corby (and used in footings of new developments) and it also went to the Kettering Leisure Park, where the Odeon cinema and a number of restaurants were built.

Collins solicitors, who led the landmark case, are involved once more and last week, standing looking at the Deene Quarry, solicitor Dani Holliday said the issue of the waste containment site has never been looked at properly.

She said the court case established that there was ‘undeniable incompetence’ by some officers of the former Corby Borough Council who were leading the reclamation project. She said:

“No-one ever went back and had a look and said ‘has this been done properly?’ It was just covered over and something heavy and vibrating [the speedway] was placed on it. You could not make it up really. It is so absurd.”

Des Collins says the way forward is a public enquiry. He said the local authority is currently acting as the previous one did and is not being transparent, but it could call on the government to act.

He said:

“What the council can do is go to Wes Streeting [health secretary] and say ‘this has got out of hand and you must now direct that there is a public enquiry.”

Tracey Taylor, who is leading a campaign for a public enquiry and was one of the mother’s depicted in the Toxic Town drama unearthed the parish council minutes, which suggest that contamination is leaking, after a trawl online. Her daughter Shelby died in 1996 less than a week after she was born with only two chambers in her heart. Tracey, like the father of another child who was born with deformities, worked at the Euromax Logistics site - which is less than a 100 metres away from Deene Quarry.

She said:

“They say there is yearly testing done of this site. But where are the reports? If the testing has been done, why are they not publicly available?

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The MP

Corby’s MP Lee Barron has said he will help the families get answers.

He said:

“My priority has always been to support the families who deserve answers to their questions.
“This includes setting up the meeting in January 2025 with the Environment Agency and North Northamptonshire Council and representatives from Gretton Parish Council. It was an opportunity to bring together authorities who manage and monitor the site.

“At this meeting reassurances were given by the Environment Agency, but many people will be aware that there have been ongoing concerns.

“This is why I welcomed the opportunity to support the work of Earthwatch, the internationally recognised charity, to run the country’s largest community water testing project. The results of this testing carried out in late November, 2025, highlighted that there were indicators that this was still an area of interest. This information was shared with North Northamptonshire Council and the Environment Agency.

“After receiving further concerns from constituents, a week ago I asked for an update from the Environment Agency and I am waiting for an update. Wes Streeting is aware of the families’ concerns and has been kept up to date.”

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Council response

We put a series of question to North Northamptonshire Council last Thursday about the testing of the historic landfill site and whether the authority understood it to be leaking. The authority says answers will be given in full later this week and gave this holding statement:

“North Northamptonshire Council  recognises the  understandable strength of feeling amongst the residents of Corby in relation to the historic and emotive issue of contaminated land and takes environmental concerns extremely seriously.”

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An investigation of cancer rates by North Northamptonshire Council has concluded that childhood cancer rates are not higher in Corby.

The authority’s director of public health Jane Bethea made public the findings this morning, after telling campaigners of the conclusions earlier this week.

A group of parents, led by Alison Gaffney and Andy Hinde, whose son was diagnosed with cancer in 2018, feared his illness and others had been caused by the legacy of the mismanaged clean up of toxic waste left behind by the steelworks in the 1980s and 1990s.

In response to their campaign the council said it would investigate and work with government agency the UK Health Security Agency and the NHS funded National Disease Registration Service (NDRS) to look at hospital data and cancer statistics.

The data looked at the past decade to 2025 and the report says:

“In summary, the analyses presented do not provide evidence to suggest that rates of childhood cancer in Corby are higher overall, or that there are areas within Corby that have higher than expected rates.

“These two analyses have been completed independently of each other, and both have similar findings. The analyses have looked at 10 years of data (although the HES analysis will include children diagnosed prior to 2015) and the methodology and the interpretation have been reviewed by external experts to give us as much confidence as possible that what we have done provides a true picture of childhood cancer rates in Corby.”

The analysis by the NDRS found that childhood cancer rates were not higher within 5km of Deene Quarry (where the toxic waste was largely contained). It found the rate for the area within 5km was 9.8 per 100,000 residents per year and for the rest of the Corby area (excluding the Deene quarry area), it was 11.6. The overall rate for Northamptonshire was 13.0 and the rates for the East Midlands and for England were 15.1 and 16.4 respectively.

The study also looked at the range of cancers and found there was not more than one type of cancer, with the most common forms being leukaemia and lymphomas, in line with proportions found nationally.

Jane Bethea said:

“First and foremost, I want to acknowledge the families who raised these concerns. Their determination, care for their community and willingness to ask difficult questions have been vital in enabling this work to take place. We approached this analysis with seriousness and sensitivity, ensuring the most robust methods were used and that the work was independently reviewed.

“The findings provide reassurance that childhood cancer rates in Corby are not higher than expected. However, we recognise the courage it takes for families affected by cancer to share their experiences, and we remain committed to listening, learning and acting on future concerns that may fall within the remit of the council.”

The reports will be made public on the council’s website, although the authority has said the raw data cannot be shared as it is subject to data protection rules.

Alison and Andy from Great Oakley, Corby, said:

“The council has been sitting on our request for data for 8 months, only now to produce something that looks like it has been manipulated to usefully undermine the community’s concerns.

“A small-scale look around Deene Quarry is not going to identify widespread problems that we know exist. Our own efforts have uncovered several other at risk areas which have not been examined by the Council, according to this report.

“We asked for cancer diagnoses data for 0–24-year-olds from the time of the reclamation to date, but today’s report doesn’t cover even half of this request, so is clearly not a true representation of the Corby childhood cancer cases that exist.

“Have the children and people of Corby not suffered enough? We’ve been patient and given the local authority plenty of time to come clean - but they have chosen not to do so. It is so disrespectful.

“We are fully united behind our solicitor, Des Collins’ call for a full public inquiry as the only way to get to the truth and we’ll do everything in our power to get one.

“Without seeing the full data sets that the council has point blankly refused to share, this summary report is not worth the paper it is written on. For many in this town, the council’s response will feel far too familiar, just like when facing the first court case on this matter some twenty years ago. That didn’t end well for them then and just fuels the fight in us now.

Des Collins, solicitor to the local families suffering health concerns in the area, said:

“Sadly, the council’s analysis is fatally flawed. Put simply, if you choose to look in the wrong direction you won’t find the real answers.

“We have been asking the council for months to confirm where all the toxic waste is buried and they’ve prevaricated and deflected throughout. The report they issued today treats Deene Quarry as the sole location of all contaminated waste, which we know not to be true. Taking cancer data from this area alone is wilful blindness at best.

“The strong and determined Corby community won’t be taken for fools. They know there’s a damaging health issue across the town (and possibly beyond) and recognise it is now likely to require a public inquiry to expose it.

“Frankly, the council’s obstinacy is a shocking dereliction of duty and cruelly dismissive of the valid concerns of people it is supposed to serve.”

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Separately from the childhood cancer campaign group, there is another group of families led by Tracey Taylor and Maggie Mahon, who were part of the original group that fought Corby Borough Council in the 2000s and won a legal case that found their child’s birth defects were caused by the toxic waste particles that escaped into the air during the 1990s clean up.

They fear the contamination is still having an impact today, with more children being born with deformities, more cancers and more still births.

Water testing in November found that there was widespread metal contamination in Corby’s freshwaters, with hotspots in two places linked to the steelworks clean up. These areas had higher levels of cadmium and nickel. However the council and the Environment Agency has said there will be no further action following these findings by independent charity Earthwatch Europe.

News in brief

West Northamptonshire Council (WNC) paid out over £32,000 in recruitment costs to find a new chief executive to run the authority, despite the process failing to find the “ideal person”.

It was announced in December the council would pause its plans for appointing a permanent chief exec after members of the senior appointments committee interviewed numerous candidates, but decided that none were the right fit for the organisation.

A Freedom of Information (FOI) request submitted by the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) has now revealed that West Northants spent £32,430 with its recruitment partner on advertising the position.

This process ended with the council receiving 106 applications to become the council’s next CEO, with just six who were shortlisted and made it to the interview panels.

According to WNC’s announcement, Martin Henry, who stepped up as interim chief executive in November from his role as chief finance officer, will continue into the summer when a second round of recruitment will take place.

A WNC spokesman said:

“Although the senior appointments committee was not persuaded that we currently had the right fit this time round, the process was valuable and will be reflected upon when we revisit recruitment later this year.”

The senior appointments committee is a cross-party panel made up of four Reform UK councillors and one elected member from each of the Conservative, Labour and Lib Dem groups on the council. Sessions are held in private and any appointment would be escalated to full council for approval, on the recommendation of the group.

Cllr Jonathan Harris (Liberal Democrat group leader), who sat in on the interviews as a committee member, said the decision not to appoint any of the candidates in this round of recruitment wasn’t unanimous.

Since the last round of recruitment closed, neighbouring authority Buckinghamshire Council has also begun searching for a new CEO of its own, which is reported to carry a £240,000 per year salary – higher than the £200k salary advertised by West Northants.

WNC did not respond to questions on whether further rounds of the recruitment process will incur further costs to the taxpayer.

Report by Nadia Lincoln, local democracy reporter

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The husband of Izzy Knight has been sentenced for her murder.

Yesterday at Northampton Crown Court Paul Knight was given a life sentence with a minimum term of 17 years and one month.

Knight, 36, killed his wife by strangulation on June 13 last year at their Burton Latimer home and then attempted to take his own life. The court heard he left a suicide note saying he had not meant to kill her, but had done so due to his cocaine addiction and financial worries.

In the months before her death Izzy, who had two children with her husband, had said she had wanted to divorce him and had been looking for other properties.

Permanent memorials placed on the site of fatal collisions will no longer be allowed on North Northamptonshire roads, after executive members voted through a new highway network management plan.

At a meeting of the executive last week, councillors considered a report which updated how North Northamptonshire Council (NNC) manages, maintains and develops its network of roads and paths.

One piece of guidance brought within the plan will ban all plaques and monuments from being placed as a roadside memorial, over concerns that it could be a distraction for motorists or an obstruction to the public highway.

The report said:

“Their long-term presence raises concerns over the maintenance, repair and insurance issues which in time are likely to rest with the highway authority. The memorials could become an attraction for vandalism, causing distress to relatives.

“Given the above and that there are alternative means of leaving a memorial to the victim of a collision, plaques and monuments will not be permitted by NNC for this purpose.”

The updated plan replaces the old Northamptonshire County Council version, which was adopted in 2021.

Report by Nadia Lincoln

West Northants Council (WNC) is not currently “a priority” for a specialist DOGE visit, despite promises last year the national unit would start work to find wasteful spending.

After taking control of the unitary authority last May, West Northants Reform announced to much fanfare that it would be one of the first authorities to receive a visit from the party’s Elon Musk-style efficiency unit, which was tasked with auditing council spending.

Newly elected leader, Mr. Mark Arnull said that the team of software engineers, data analysts and forensic auditors poised to take a look at the council balance books would “make it that much easier to identify waste and free up funds which we can redirect towards frontline public services”.

But at the council’s place and resources scrutiny committee on Monday the cabinet member for finance, Cllr John Slope, said:

“I think it’s been looked at the level of scrutiny which West Northants undergoes itself. I think we’re less of a priority for the Reform group as such because we’re doing a damn good job here.

“That doesn’t mean to say that we wouldn’t revisit it in the future, but at the moment we’re not a priority for any specialist group to come in.“

Chair of the committee, Cllr Ian McCord (Independent) commented:

“I think it’s a simple statement of fact that there’s not been any DOGE impact directly in terms of people turning up with their laptops and going through data, but there might have been some indirectly in the background, I don’t know.

“We’ll leave it on the work programme as something we can have this pointless discussion on a regular basis.”

The 2026/27 budget will go for approval at full council on February 26. A 4.99 per cent increase is being proposed.

Residents have until next Tuesday, February 3, to respond to the public consultation on the proposals.

By Nadia Lincoln

Plans to build up to 450 new homes on the edge of Northampton have been given the go-ahead, following negotiations between the council and the developer.

The proposals for the large housing development, called Roman Fields, sit to the north of the village of Harpole off Upper High Street and Roman Road. West Northamptonshire Council (WNC) planning committee considered the housing project at a meeting on Thursday, January 22.

Developers Davidsons Developments Limited and John R. Green & Iris
F. Green asked for full planning permission for 100 homes on the first parcel of land, with outline permission for a further 350 houses to follow later on. The development will also include public open spaces, pedestrian and cycle routes, a play area and landscaping.

The application was deferred by councillors in September last year to reassess the scheme’s financial viability and its levels of affordable housing, as well as exploring whether a pedestrian link from the village of Harpole to the estate could be delivered.

The site lies within the southern section of the Northampton West Sustainable Urban Extension, which will provide a local centre, primary school and other associated facilities once built out. However, concerns were raised that, until this comes forward, the homes would be isolated from any local amenities.

A proposal to approve the plans and pursue the option for 10 per cent affordable housing and having the public space under parish council control was ultimately accepted.

Developers will also be required through Section 106 conditions to make nearly £7.8 million in financial contributions to offset the impact on local services and infrastructure, including money towards public transport, education provision, libraries and the North West Relief Road.

By Nadia Lincoln

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Corby’s Town Council says it wants answers from the unitary authority following a water survey which found heavy metals in the town’s freshwaters.

The authority, which until now has remained relatively silent on the environmental issue that is concerning many in the town, has released a statement this afternoon saying its Labour leader Simon Rielly has written to the Reform UK led North Northamptonshire Council.

His statement comes after a meeting of the council’s environment committee yesterday and ahead of a Lib Dem motion tonight calling for the authority to support the residents seeking answers and call on the organisations responsible for managing the contaminated land to work together.

In November, helped by national charity Earthwatch Europe, local residents tested locations at the three brooks that run through Corby to try and discover whether there is contamination in the water. This was due to fears that toxic contamination still in the land from the clean up of the steelworks in the 1980s and 1990s is possibly causing health issues today.

The testing found that all 59 sites tested had a heavy metal presence and there were hotspots of cadmium and nickel in two areas of the town that are close to the site where the toxic waste was taken and to a former slag heap where steel waste was stored. The testing has not made any conclusions on what impact the metals could have on human health but the charity said the metals found can impact aquatic life.

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On Saturday morning the results of a mass citizen science testing experiment were unveiled to a packed village hall near Corby. The tests of just shy of 60 locations at Corby’s freshwater brooks on a single day in November, had found the presence of heavy metals at every location, with two areas - close to the quarry where the contaminated waste from the town’s former steel works was taken and buried - and the site of a former slag heap in Weldon.

The sites tested, by locals armed with specialised testing kits, had been both upstream and downstream of the former steelworks site in the north of the town, with Willow Brook, Harpers Brooks and Gretton Brook all investigated at the various points they flow through Corby and its surrounding villages in Stanion, Weldon and Gretton.

The tests were carried out following widespread concern in the town that the former clean up of the steelworks carried out in the 1980s and 1990s has left a harmful legacy. A group of families won a landmark court case in 2009 which decided their children’s birth defects had been caused by toxic particles in the air and following the dramatisation of their story by Netflix last year, there has come to the fore more families who think their health issues, including cancers, heart issues, rare diseases and infant deaths, could be linked to contaminated land.

The results

In total 29 metals were tested for, with analysis carried out in scientific labs by Manchester based Artemis Analytical.

The investigations found that at every site across Corby, at least one metal or metalloid was present at concentrations which exceed their predicted no effect concentration (PNEC), the concentration below which no adverse ecological effects are expected. This means aquatic life living in these waters could be at risk of harm.

Nickel, a metal used to make steel, was detected above its PNEC at 30 sites, while cadmium (which can be used to coat steel) was detected at elevated concentrations at seven sites. Sites where cadmium and nickel concentrations were elevated were largely concentrated around Deene Quarry, where the toxic waste was taken in the extensive steel works clean up, and a former slag heap in Weldon.

The test is the first of its kind in the country, and the largest survey of metals in freshwater. Dr Sasha Woods, from national charity Earthwatch, which led the study, said that the elevated levels of cadmium and nickel at the Deene Quarry and the suspected site of a former slag heap, indicates that these are potential sources of the pollution. The licence for Deene Quarry is held by North Northamptonshire Council and is monitored annually by the Environment Agency (EA).

Five metals (cadmium, caesium, gallium, rubidium and vanadium) were found at significantly higher concentrations within one mile from the pollution hotspots compared to other sites across. Arsenic, a naturally occurring metal found in rock, was also found at every site and at all sites except one, was at a higher rate than the PNEC concentration.

While concentrating on Corby, the study may have implications for the wider country.

Dr Woods said:

“The conclusions we can draw from this data are that because high concentrations of metals like cobalt, copper, nickel are found in sites throughout Corby, so upstream of the pollution hotspots, we can infer that metal pollution might be a more widespread issue across the UK, not just limited to Corby.”

The study did not focus on the town’s drinking water. The town’s freshwater is not extracted for drinking water, this comes from the reservoir at Rutland Water.

The report can be read in full here.

Toxic legacy

Maggie Mahon, whose family were part of the original court case is now fighting with fellow campaigner Tracey Taylor to get a public enquiry.

She said:

“Although it is not conclusive, I think this is a really good starting point to move on from. There is now solid evidence that there are heavy metals in the water and there are hotspots that correlate to areas where we thought there was contamination. We are campaigning for a public enquiry and if we are able to get that, everything will be investigated.”

Tracey Taylor said:

“I am not surprised by the results. The two areas of hotspots are areas we had concerns about and we need more investigations.

“We are not stopping, the fight continues. I have been involved in this for over 30 years and still today there are babies being born with limb differences. It is wrong.”

Many questions remain

The testing has shown there is a heavy metal presence in the waterways and some areas where it is, but as to what that fact means for people who live and work in the area is unknown. Also how the metals got into the water is unclear.

Dr Sasha Woods told those gathered that more testing would be needed to get more definitive answers.

She said:

“Further testing is needed to build up a better picture and draw more conclusions. “It was a very wet weekend [when the testing took place]. What this means is because water was running off the roads, we can’t rule out that some of the metal pollution was simply being washed from our roads into the rivers.

“If we repeated this is in summer, when it wasn’t raining, if concentrations were still high, we could infer that the metal pollution was leaching through the ground into the water, rather than running off the roads.”

She said soil sampling could be another way of detecting metals in the environment and told those present:

“I know it will be of interest to see if there is any relationship between the cadmium in our fresh waters and the health of the community. That is not something we investigated and our data does not speak on it, but this is something that warrants further investigation.”

She said a more controlled study and analysis taken out by health organisations would be needed and another way to assess the impact on human health would be to take blood samples to test for metal presence.

Funding will need to be found to pay for any further testing.

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Taking it to Westminster

The water testing was organised by Corby MP Lee Barron’s office, in partnership with Earthwatch, who funded the scheme. (NN Journal was also involved in initial discussions with the charity and mapping out the testing sites).

At Saturday’s meeting he told those gathered, many of whom suspect their or their family’s health has been compromised by contaminated land, that he would raise the issue in parliament. The report has been sent to the Department of Health.

He said:

“What we have tried to do over recent months is to try and construct a way to get some answers as there are a lot of questions out there. But for me it isn’t about politics, it’s about communities.

“And people are communities, not buildings. And if there are problems out there then I believe we need to find them in order to be able to put it right. Because at the end of the day it is not on any longer for these questions to be out there and us not finding the answers. And this was part of the journey to do that.

“When we go back to parliament next week, we are going to have the end of the Hillsborough Law legislation, which gives a duty of candour to local authorities and public servants to make sure that people get the answers and the cover ups stop and we are going to be using that debate on Wednesday to once again raise your issues and once again turn around and say people deserve answers.”

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Call for action

Over the decades those in power in Corby have been slow to act and have not listened to community concerns. The former Corby Borough Council fought the first group of families in the 2000s and last year the successor North Northamptonshire Council (NNC) refused to release information about potentially contaminated sites.

Lisa Atkinson, whose daughter was born with birth defects and was part of the successful 2009 group, said too many people with influence have stood back.

She said:

“I think they have stood back because it is controversial. They did not need to. Much of this happened when they were little. This was not their fault, but what they need to do now is to step up. They need to show they are a generation of leaders who can sort this out.”

The Environment Agency’s responsibilities include regulating major industry and waste, the treatment of contaminated land and water quality. It has classified Willow Brook, Harpers Brook and Gretton Brook as having moderate ecological status based on multiple samples per year. Data from 2019 and 2022 indicates that all three waterbodies had high status of copper, iron, manganese and zinc, and are considered “Good” in terms of their cadmium and nickel levels, based on Environmental Quality Standards rather than PNEC.

Earthwatch has shared its findings with the EA which said:

“We welcome the initiative and work that has been carried out by Earthwatch Europe. Citizen science is a valuable contribution to the evidence base on water and helps to identify and prioritise action. `
We will study the findings of the final report so we can support and advise North Northamptonshire Council and Earthwatch Europe on their next steps.”

Several months ago NNC said it was looking into health data regarding childhood cancer rates over the past decade and said it would work with campaigners to investigate where waste from the steelworks could have been disposed of. There are concerns that some of the waste was taken to other sites rather than to Deene Quarry as it should have been. No information has been shared with the public as yet.

The council said this weekend, in response to the Earthwatch study:

“We are in receipt of the report from Earthwatch Europe and will now want to fully review its findings. Once we have been through the report we will consider next steps and will liaise with appropriate partner organisations on the potential for further investigation.

“North Northamptonshire Council recognises the understandable strength of feeling amongst the residents of Corby in relation to the historic and emotive issue of contaminated land.
“Regarding requests for more information on potentially contaminated land sites, we are still in the process of plotting sites that we know about in the Corby area on a map. This is an extensive piece of work to collate historic data which we will complete as soon as possible.”

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Corby’s waterways were tested for heavy metals at the weekend by dozens of residents working with a national environmental charity and the town’s MP to get answers about contamination.

Local volunteers became citizen scientists as part of the mass testing of sections of the three brooks that run through the nearby villages and into the town before joining the River Nene at Elton in Cambridgeshire.

Heavy metals were present at almost each freshwater location tested and the samples have been sent away for analysis at the Imperial College London to find out exactly which metals were present and in what concentrations. A report will be published in January with the findings.

The testing is the first of its kind by national charity Earthwatch Europe, which is known for its mass mobilisation of communities to test the quality of their freshwater sources in the bi-annual WaterBlitz events.

The testing in Corby was in response to growing community concerns about the impact of toxic chemicals produced by the former steelworks and deposited in former quarry sites in the North of the town. Metals tested for include cadmium, zinc and copper.

Dr Sasha Woods, director of science and impact at Earthwatch Europe, was in charge of activities on the day, collecting the samples from the volunteers and logging them before sending off all the samples for scientific analysis.
She said:

“We’re really pleased to be working with the community in Corby on this important project. Earthwatch’s involvement offers the opportunity for the local community to investigate freshwater health and possible contaminants through robust citizen science. Whilst this project will not look at any potential effects on human health, we will support the community to use the report to improve their water quality if necessary.”

She added:

“Our citizen science metals testing kits have been used in Africa to examine the effects of artisanal gold mining on freshwater health. Our project in Corby gives us the opportunity to verify the methodology for use in a UK context. This has important implications for the whole country as it means that we may have a low-cost option to test for metals contamination right across the UK.”

Campaigners Maggie Mahon, Tracey Taylor and their husbands took part in the testing. The women, whose lives were both portrayed in Netflix drama Toxic Town are fighting for a public enquiry into how the toxic reclamation was handled and also to come up with how contaminated land in the town can be managed today.

They were part of a group that worked with solicitor Des Collins to prove their children’s birth defects were due to the reclamation of the toxic waste sites that happened in Corby during the 1980s and 1990s.

Tracey said:

“It is important that this has been done because we need to know whether there is heavy metal in the water and what the metals are. I think the next thing to do would be to test the soil.

“We would hope the Environment Agency and an independent agency, other than the council, then decide to clean it up, as this needs to be done properly.”

Adam Stanford tested sites in Weldon. Born with club feet, he was part of the original group of families but did not receive compensation. (His story is featured here in our special report).

He said:

“For a lot of us who were born with birth defects or health issues, the contamination has been covered up.

“The council is still trying to minimise the problem and refusing to say where the potentially contaminated sites are. I am keen to see what the results of the water testing will show.”

North Northamptonshire Council, which took over the running services in the town from Corby Borough Council in 2021, has said it will work with local families and has agreed with the group representing children with childhood cancer to set up a working group.

However the authority has refused to release where potentially contaminated sites are to Des Collins, who is working on behalf of families.

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NN Journal’s involvement

NN Journal has been involved in this project since the beginning earlier this summer. In the aftermath of Toxic Town, which aired in February and following a by chance conversation with Josh Kubale from Earthwatch Europe, the charity offered to get involved and provide citizen science kits to help test the town’s waterways.

It is a UK first for the charity and Corby MP Lee Barron’s office offered to run the administration of the project. The MP has promised families that he will help them to get answers about what impact the steelwork’s reclamation is having on the town’s health today.

Together with the MP’s caseworker Ann Wallington, intern Merle Cooper-Wilson and former Corby town councillor Rob Newby, who has awareness of the freshwater around Gretton, I helped map out the waterways that lead into the town.

Harpers Brook (running from the Pipewell to the south west of Corby); a northern and southern stream of the Willowbrook and Gretton Brook (which originates in Gretton) all run through the town and close to the steelworks.

Our investigations from site visits found a number of freshwater locations in the town are inaccessible and behind fencing and large sections of the brooks have been culverted and run underground, popping up now and again in places such as Oakley Vale; on the Kingswood estate and along the industrial estates close to Gretton Brooke Road.

Sites were chosen due to accessibility and we divided the area into five parts, depending on how the brooks were located.

We tested upstream and downstream of the steelworks site in Weldon Road and also tested various sites in the nearby villages of Weldon, Deene and Deenethorpe, Stanion and Pipewell. In total 58 water spots were tested on the day by local volunteers.

They were allocated a testing site at random, navigated to the site via a GPS pin and then used the citizen science kits to collect water in a sample bottle. A quick check showed whether metals were present in the sample.

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The reclamation of Corby’s toxic steelworks coincided with an increase in the number of babies in the town dying in the 1980s, an environmental campaigner has discovered.

Michael Ryan, who has been campaigning about air pollution for more than two decades, has analysed official infant mortality rates from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) and discovered a spike in the rate of children under the age of one who died during the primary years of the clean up.

The steelworks closed in 1980, after several decades of production and the clean up of large swathes of former steel land began in the early 1980s and carried on throughout the 1990s.

From 1982 to 1990, the infant mortality rate rose significantly and was higher than the national average.

In 1987 and 1988 the infant mortality rate was double the national average, with 16 babies dying in the town in 1987 and 18 in 1988.

This was when toxic ponds and contaminated land were being cleaned up and moved to Deene Quarry, a special waste dump, which later became the site of Rockingam Motor Speedway.

Also during the 1970s when the steelworks was in operation the infant mortality in Corby (per 1000 live births) was consistently higher than the national average (more on this further down the article).

Currently there is no established causal link between infant mortality rates in the town and the steel works reclamation.

A growing number of families are asking questions about how the legacy of the steelworks reclamation has affected their own health and that of their loved ones. There is a concern that rates of childhood cancer are higher in Corby and also that more children were born with birth deformities and there were more stillbirths and babies dying at a young age.

In 2009 a group of families won a landmark case with solicitor Des Collins that proved their child’s birth defects has been caused by toxic waste particles that had hung in the air and spread across parts of the town.

Following the release of Netflix drama Toxic Town earlier this year, the issue of how the steelworks clean up has affected the town’s health and whether it is still causing problems has risen again.

Michael Ryan, is from Shropshire and his baby Veronica daughter died aged just 14 weeks in 1985 and his son David died from Leukaemia aged 19 in 1999. He began campaigning in 2002 and worked for many years alongside GP Dick Van Steenis to raise awareness of air pollution. He believes that his children’s deaths were linked to emissions from a hospital incinerator close to his home which burnt clinical and radioactive waste.

He became aware of the Corby victory in 2009 and using data obtained for him by his MP Daniel Kawczynski, in 2017 he submitted evidence of Corby’s infant mortality spike to The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee (EFRA) which scrutinised the work of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

He told NN Journal:

“It was by chance I had looked at Corby because I had remembered the case and Dr Van Steenis had helped Des Collins.

“If there has been a lot of birth defects there must also be a lot of infant deaths as well.”

His analysis proved there had been a spike.

He said:

“It is the injustice of it all that cuts me.

“It is difficult to believe that Corby Borough Council would not have known about the high infant mortality.”

Mr Ryan has submitted a freedom of information request to North Northamptonshire Council asking for all documents held by the council that show a sudden rise in the infant mortality rate. It has been refused and he has been told that this is because the data will be released soon.

On the request of some families the council’s public health team is looking at NHS data to try and discover whether there has been a higher rate of childhood cancer in the town. However the study is only looking at cases from 2014 to 2024.

This week the council’s leader Martin Griffiths announced his senior officers would work together with campaigners to investigate where contaminated waste could potentially have been disposed of and has promised transparency. The council has said this is to work towards a healthier future for everyone in the town.

Tracey and Mark Taylor’s daughter Shelby Anne died at less than a week old in 1996. When pregnant Tracey had worked at the Euramax factory on the Earlstrees estate and gave evidence to the court in 2009 about the red dust that was being carried across the town by trucks containing the toxic waste covered her desk and her car each evening.

She was dropped from the court action in the very final stages, because her daughter, who was born with a deformed heart, was the only child in the case, who had died. Solicitor Des Collins concluded it would be easier to prove the case without including Shelby.

Tracey, who together with Maggie Mahon has been raising awareness of health issues and is fighting for a public enquiry into what happened in Corby, said: “Our group has 35 angel babies (babies who have died). Michael’s findings need to be looked at and taken seriously.”

Michael’s data goes back as far as 1974 and shows a higher infant mortality rate in the town during the years when Corby was producing steel.

NN Journal has looked through the British Newspaper Archives and found a number of articles published in the early 1950s which refer to Corby’s high infant mortality rate.

An article from the Northampton Mercury titled Death in Air for Corby’s Babies said figures showed that deaths of under ones per 1000 births was 26 in Corby compared to the national rate of 14.

In response the county’s medical officer of health Dr Smith had written a report which concluded:

“Infant mortality rates are higher than the rates in other urban districts in the county. The excess is due to a higher rate from the disease of the lungs and this is possibly due to atmospheric pollution.”

Recommendations included keeping records of infant mortality and detailed inquiries into every death of a child under one.

By Sarah Ward

If you would like to speak with Sarah Ward about this story, please email sarahward@nnjournal.co.uk

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West Northamptonshire Council (WNC) has approved a phased plan to bring the management of its social housing stock back in-house, in a bid to improve failing standards.

In 2024, under the previous Conservative council, the Regulator of Social Housing issued a C3 notice, which indicated ‘serious failings’ in how Northamptonshire Partnership Homes (NPH) was complying with home safety and quality standards.

NPH is responsible for managing social housing properties in Northampton and offers services including repairs, maintenance, tenancy management, and supporting vulnerable tenants. It was identified that key statistics were not being reported accurately and that 22 per cent of its 11,500 social houses did not meet the decent homes standard.

WNC says the move will improve safety, transparency, and long-term service quality for tenants across the area while strengthening accountability and compliance with new national housing regulations.

An options appraisal was brought before the cabinet on Tuesday (November 11), with a choice between doing nothing and working alongside NPH to improve standards, or ceasing operation of the organisation completely and either bringing service responsibility back to WNC in a ‘lift and shift’ approach by April 2026, or a phased approach by April 2027.

According to the report, the transfer will cost an estimated £1.6m to manage the move, backfill existing staff, and cover other costs such as legal advice. WNC says the move could reduce costs and create efficiencies, with potential annual savings of 85k from 2027 onwards.

A consultation with tenants, leaseholders, and stakeholders earlier this year showed strong support for the proposed change, with 60 per cent of the 2,699 respondents in favour compared to under 10 per cent who were not.

A number of opposition councillors criticised the move with Conservative Cllr Cecile Irving-Swift saying:

“With all the budgetary pressure your administration is facing, you’ll be adding the complication of an acquisition and integration project to your load.

“Well, that is your choice. Let us be clear, the Conservative choice would’ve been for the long term and different.”

Labour’s West Northants group leader, Cllr Sally Keeble, also criticised the options for being “a binary choice of in or out based on very little information”.

She added:

“Already, there’s a housing crisis in Northampton, but it’s nothing compared with what will happen if you get this decision wrong and also if the implementation is wrong.

“I would’ve expected to see in this the full options appraisal, with costings, with an expert and detailed analysis of how this was going to lead to a delivery of the standards, and also an improvement for people in Northampton. I don’t see that here.”

NPH employs around 350 staff and has an annual budget of £67m. Bringing services under direct council management would mean all current NPH staff need to be transferred to WNC under TUPE.

WNC Leader Mark Arnull said:

“It’s clearly going to be one of the biggest and most significant papers of the first few years of the administration.

“I think the damning words here that I’ve written down are inadequate scrutiny and that’s before our time as well. We look back to former members and place some responsibility there.

“The staff at NPH are an absolute asset, but there are some issues about how things are being run and they’re going to need to be addressed very very soon.”

Cabinet members voted unanimously to close down NPH and bring the social housing responsibilities back under direct control by April 2027.

Consultations will now be carried out with NPH staff, key stakeholders and an Equality Impact Assessment will be conducted to understand the differences in satisfaction levels among different age groups, ethnicities, and locations.

WNC must also get formal approval from the Secretary of State for the change.

Report by Nadia Lincoln, local democracy reporter

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The police watchdog has concluded its investigation into four Northants Police officers who were served with disciplinary notices for their involvement with domestic abuse victim Harshita Brella, before she was killed last year.

Monday (November 10) marked the one year anniversary since Harshita was believed to have been murdered in Corby. Her body was found in the boot of a car in East London and her husband Pankaj Lamba, who has been charged with her murder fled the country and has not been found by police.

Her family have been very critical of Northants Police and also police in Delhi where he is believed to be. As reported by ITV there have also been credible sightings of him working in a local shop.

In March the Independent Office for Police Conduct served the disciplinary notices for gross misconduct on two detective constables regarding alleged failings to progress enquiries and communicate with Ms Brella after her report of domestic abuse at the end of August 2024. Two more senior officers of an unreported rank were served misconduct notices relating to their supervision of the case and relevant risk assessments.

The IOPC says:

“Our investigation is complete and the Final Report, including our provisional decisions relating to four officers, have been made and shared with the force for any representations they wish to make. We will consider any representations before making our final determinations on whether any officers have a misconduct case to answer.

Northants Police said:

“We’ll be issuing a statement following the formal publication of the IOPC’s report. It wouldn’t be appropriate for us to comment further until they have reported the outcome of their investigation.”

Corby’s MP Lee Barron spoke with the home secretary Shabana Mahmood recently about the case and has written to Northants Police asking for reassurances that her family are being kept up to date with the investigation.

By Sarah Ward

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News in brief

Northampton South MP Mike Reader has raised the Workbridge closure in parliament. Service users were left shocked last week when St Andrew’s Healthcare suddenly announced that the centre in Northampton for people with complex health needs will close due to financial issues at the charity.

Mike Reader has said:

“It is shocking that this vital institution has been allowed to close.

“I raised its closure in Parliament with the relevant minister. We must understand how such a highly valued service can go from being celebrated to closing within six months. I’ll keep working to get answers, to stand up for everyone who relies on its service, and to ask the Council how things got to this point.”

WNC has said:

“We are actively working to understand the implications for those who rely on its services. Our priority is to ensure continuity of support, and we are engaging with partners across the sector to explore how we can best respond and provide assistance where needed.”

A man appeared at Crown Court yesterday charged with the murder of John Gerard Boyle.

John, 71, was found dead inside his flat in Leatherland Court, Kettering, at about 6.30pm last Saturday (November 8) after police were called to reports of a concern for welfare.

John David Martin Mills, aged 45, of Marriott Street, Northampton, was charged with one count of murder and one count of theft of a motor vehicle in connection with the incident.

He was also charged with two counts of breaching his notification requirements, unrelated to the murder.

Mills appeared at Northampton Magistrates’ Court on Thursday and appeared via videolink at Northampton Crown Court on Friday. He did not enter a plea. The BBC has reported his next appearance will be in February.

A claim made in parliament by Reform UK leader Nigel Farage MP about WNC’s action on asylum hotels has caused concern.

Farage said at Prime Ministers Questions this week that Reform UK led WNC woud be issuing foreclosure notices to three hotels in the area that are housing asylum seekers. He said this was ‘in response to grave public concern about the safety of women and girls on the streets of West Northamptonshire.”

In a statement to NN Journal on Thursday, WNC leader Mark Arnull did not clarify whether Farage’s claim was correct. The authority has been seeking legal advice on what action it can take and has said publicly the use of the hotels is not supported.

He:

“We are taking decisive action to end the use of these three hotels for asylum accommodation. We are awaiting final confirmation from Counsel on the most robust legal route to achieve the closure of these asylum hotels with the highest likelihood of success.

“Hotels have never been suitable for housing asylum seekers, and their continued use by the Home Office in West Northamptonshire places an intolerable and unsustainable burden on our local services and communities. The Council will act swiftly and resolutely to protect our residents and uphold our position.”

Labour’s group leader Sally Keeble has said any information about the council’s actions should go to elected councillors first rather than being given to Farage to announce in parliament.

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Two men accused of the killing of Corby man Ryan Burton pleaded guilty yesterday to his murder in the middle of a trial.

Ryan was seriously assaulted in Spring Rise Park on Kettering’s Highfield Estate shortly before 7pm on Friday, January 10. He died at University Hospital Coventry six days later after he contracted sepsis due to the severity of his injuries.

Keiton Underwood and Ace Hill have been on trial since the beginning of October, along with four other defendants who continue to deny the murder of 34-year-old Ryan.

Taking to the stand during the trial, which is now in its eighth week, 20-year-old Underwood admitted murdering Ryan and committing a separate offence of robbery on the same evening.

Both the murder and robbery charges were read to him again, and this time he pleaded guilty. The jury were asked by the judge to return a guilty verdict, which they did.

Then 19-year-old Hill admitted his role in the murder of Ryan and the jury were asked to return a guilty verdict.

Hill, of Minden Close, Corby, and Underwood, of Bridge Street, Desborough, will be sentenced at Northampton Crown Court on December 22.

The trial will continue on Monday for the four remaining defendants who are Cameron Williams-Ferguson, aged 24, of High Street, Kettering;Connor White, aged 25, of Spencer Street, Rothwell; Kyle Derek McSkimming, aged 23, of Pen Green Lane, Corby and a 17-year-old boy, who cannot be named due to legal reasons.

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Our usual Friday brief was delayed and so today we have issued a Saturday brief instead. The Friday brief will be back in it’s usual spot next week.

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By Sarah Ward

The leader of North Northamptonshire Council (NNC) has issued a statement about the council’s investigations into concerns over Corby’s toxic legacy as questions continue to grow.

This week, health secretary Wes Streeting said his department will assess the findings of NNC’s public health director who is carrying out an investigation into whether Corby has a higher rate of childhood cancers than other areas.

And now, as more questions are posed about what has happened to the toxic waste that was moved to reclaim former steelwork’s land, the Reform UK leader of NNC Martin Griffiths has issued a statement.

NNC took over the running of Corby’s affairs in 2021 as part of the local government reorganisation which saw Corby Borough Council (CBC) and other authorities in the area closed down. In 2009 CBC had lost a legal challenge which proved birth defects suffered by a number of Corby children were caused by their mother breathing in toxic waste particles while pregnant.

Since the airing of Netflix drama Toxic Town more families have come forward, wondering whether their own health issues are a result of the toxic waste clean up.

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In his statement published to the council’s website yesterday, Cllr Griffiths, said:

“As council leader I fully understand the strength of feeling that has been generated by the handling of the disposal of waste from the former British Steel site in Corby in the 1990s as well as the legacy that this has created and concerns about health.

Though the waste disposal from the steel works was overseen by Corby Borough Council decades ago we recognise that today, it’s our duty to represent our residents and I take this duty very seriously.

After we were approached by a group of residents requesting information about the number of childhood cancer cases recorded for children living in Corby, we decided to carry out an important piece of work to carefully investigate relevant NHS data. This work will take time as it’s crucial that we get this right. As soon as we have the outcomes, we will share our findings initially with the residents who asked for this work to be done, and then we will share them publicly.

In terms of where contaminated waste from the steelworks was taken, based on the evidence we have viewed to date, the waste from the former steelworks site was moved to Deene Quarry, a former landfill site on the outskirts of Corby and was buried there.

This site is managed under an environmental permit held by North Northamptonshire Council and compliance is regulated by the Environment Agency – with gas and water sampling taking place on a yearly basis as part of the requirements of the permit.

People have recently raised concerns on potential areas of contaminated land where they believe waste could also have been historically disposed of.

I understand that people are worried about potentially contaminated land and want answers, particularly where land has subsequently been built upon. We will continue to review this and when this is concluded, will provide a further update.

However, it is important to highlight that where potentially contaminated land has or is going to be developed, tight rules and procedures are applied to ensure that our resident’s safety is protected.

In 2001, officers from the former Corby Borough Council carried out a comprehensive study of all sites in Corby that could be identified as potentially contaminated land, in accordance with the legislation at the time, and risk rated them to assess those which could have a negative impact on human health.

This extensive piece of work was catalogued in a Contaminated Land Strategy, which has now been superseded by the North Northamptonshire Contaminated Land Strategy. This is a publicly available document on the council’s website.

For the vast majority of development works, planning permission will be required. Any piece of land that needs a planning application – and may have had a previous potentially contaminative use - must be investigated using the national Land Contamination Risk Management procedure. This ensures that investigation and remediation work is carried out if required.

In addition, particularly for larger sites, there will be a dust management plan, included within a Construction Environmental Management Plan, that controls emissions of dust from a site.

We will continue to listen to the concerns of our residents and will consider any firm evidence that is brought forward. I will continue to have oversight and receive regular updates and when we have further information to share, we will do so.”

There have been calls for a public enquiry into what happened in Corby and how the town’s industrial past is impacting people’s health today.

The toxic waste clean up happened during the 1980s through to the late 1990s and saw industrial estates in the north of the town built on former steelworks land.

Corby was declared an Enterprise Zone in the early 1980s and scores of businesses set up on the newly created industrial estates and provided jobs for the thousands who had been left unemployed after steelmaking ended in 1980.

From the 1980s onwards the town continued to expand and new housing developments were built on former quarried areas such as Snatch Hill, Oakley Vale and more lately at Little Stanion and Priors Hall.

ITV aired a story last week about families connected to Little Stanion who have concerns about whether their child’s recent birth defects could have been caused by contaminated land.

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All our stories on Corby’s toxic waste legacy can be found here.

Health secretary Wes Streeting has told Corby’s MP that his department ‘will reflect carefully’ on findings of an investigation currently being carried out by the North unitary’s public health boss into Corby’s childhood cancer rates.

The issue of the disposal of toxic waste and its potential health legacy is once more the subject of public attention and following recent comments made in parliament, Lee Barron MP has this week received a letter from the Labour health secretary indicating that his department is taking a keen interest in the case.

North Northamptonshire Council’s director of Public Health Jane Bethea has been undertaking analysis of childhood cancer rates in the town following a request by families. They are concerned their children’s cancer could be linked to the clean up of large swathes of the town’s industrial heartland which had been contaminated by dangerous pollutants from the steelworks, which stopped production in 1980.

In 2009 a group of families whose children were born with physical defects won a legal battle against the former Corby Borough Council and there are concerns the toxic waste it is still causing birth defects and other health issues today.

In his letter to Lee Barron, Wes Streeting said:

“It is vital that families feel their voices are heard and that public bodies are transparent and accountable in addressing matters of significant public interest. The authorities in Corby must be transparent about the disposal of toxic waste water and the long lasting damage this has had on families.

“I am told that this issue is currently being considered by the local director of public health and the Department will reflect carefully on the findings of that work once complete. I will keep in touch with you about this.”

However while the council’s public health boss is doing her investigations into childhood cancer rates, the authority is currently refusing to answer lawyer Des Collins’ questions about contaminated waste in the town and where it is. It said last month that disclosure would not be in the public interest.

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The clean up saw areas that had contained large toxic ponds drained and taken to the large Deene Quarry - which now sites Rockingham Motor Speedway - but the 2009 legal action established there were serious issues with the reclamation and health and safety procedures were not followed. There are now concerns that toxic waste may also have been illegally dumped in areas of the town where it should not have been deposited.

Lee Barron told NN Journal today:

“It is good to now know that it is being monitored by the central government. So we have just got to make sure now that the families get the answers that we believe they are entitled to and that means the local authority being transparent.

“The longer it goes on, the more people are coming forward and I think that is just going to carry on.”

He said his office was liaising with the families. His office is also working with a national charity to undertake a widespread sampling of the town’s water to assess whether there are high levels of heavy metals.

Tracey Taylor, whose daughter Shelby died aged just four days old in 1996, was part of the original legal case and her testimony about working on the nearby industrial estate and experiencing the dust from the clean up, was crucial in securing the 2009 victory.

Together with Maggie Mahon, whose son was born with club feet, she is helping other families to try and get answers.

She said:

“Our campaign is going really well and we are getting more and more people come forward. I feel like we are finally being heard.”

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NN Journal’s website now has a section dedicated to Corby’s toxic waste legacy. Read more here.

Corby’s MP has said questions need to be answered after the local authority has refused to provide campaigners with a list of potentially contaminated sites in the town.

At a meeting at the Steel Bar in Corby on Monday night Lee Barron MP told concerned families he would ‘stand shoulder to shoulder’ with them as they attempt to get answers from the local authority about where potentially toxic waste could have been dumped in the former steel town.

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In 2009 a group of families was successful in a legal action against the former Corby Borough Council which proved that their child’s birth defects had been due to the mismanaged clean up of the vast heavily polluted steel works land in the 1980s and 1990s.

Following the Netflix drama Toxic Town, which aired earlier this year, many more families have now started to question whether their own health issues are connected to the reclamation.

Toxic chemicals such as arsenic, cadmium, chromium and zinc were moved and buried in Deene Quarry, which now sites Rockingham Motor Speedway and there are fears the waste could also have been dumped in unknown locations.

Health secretary Wes Streeting has said the authorities should be transparent and North Northamptonshire Council’s public health team is undertaking a data exercise to try and work out whether childhood cancer cases in Corby during the last decade are higher than other areas.

But the authority is refusing to tell campaigners which sites could have been potential dumping sites.

A letter from the council’s senior litigation and governance solicitor Sarah Flaxman to campaigners Tracey Taylor and Alison Gaffney on October 3 said the council had decided that ‘the weight of public interest (public good) falls in favour of non-disclosure’.

At the meeting the Labour Party MP said he was ‘aghast’ at the response from the council’s legal officer and that it was ‘a red rag to a bull’.

“Questions need to be answered and my job now is how we can take things forward.

“My quest in this is fairly simple and that is I will do whatever it is that you want me to do, in terms of getting those answers for you and if that calls for a public inquiry then I will stand shoulder to shoulder with you.”

He told the concerned families:

“We keep going. This isn’t going to be resolved, a week next Thursday. When we don’t get what we need down one avenue, we go down another. We start to raise the temperature.

“We need to fight and I think that’s the start.”

He said he would take the issue to parliament and to ministers.

His office is working with a national environmental charity to carry out a town wide experiment to test the waterways for heavy metal pollution. He said it could be used ‘as part of a package of evidence’ to demand answers.

He also said that the newly introduced Hillsborough Law, which puts a statutory duty of candour on public officials, could be used to get answers.

Agnes Anderson, whose family has been affected by health issues and whose daughter Nicola was born in 1990 with hand defects, said:

“Where were those contaminated sites? Tracey (Taylor) and I worked within throwing distance of the major one, but your whole life in Corby was touched by it at lots of different sites, where you could be socialising. We need to know where were the sites and what chemicals were there?”

Toni Middleton’s baby died at just six months old after being born in 1996 with a congenital heart defect. She was working at a site close to the reclamation site when pregnant with her child.

She said:

“It was my daughter’s birthday on Saturday. She would have been 29, so that’s 29 birthdays that I have not been able to celebrate. What gave me comfort when I lost her was thinking it was no-one’s fault. Now I think, yes there is a fault.”

Thomas Duffy, who lives in the Little Stanion area, has a six-year-old son Thomas, who was born with a hand deformity and a shortened leg.

He said:

“There does not seem to have been anything (since the 2009 court case) to safeguard the future. And there does not seem to be any urgency from the council. It seems they have buried their heads in the sand and they have been playing with our future.”

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Concerns about Corby’s recent childhood cancer rates are being analysed by North Northamptonshire Council (NNC) using hospital admission rates.

The authority’s public health team led by director Jane Bethea, is currently going through data they have received from NHS Hospital Episodes Statistics, specifically looking at admissions for Corby children aged between 0 and 19 between 2014 and last year.

The investigation comes after a group of parents (in the wake of Netflix series Toxic Town) contacted the authority with fears their own child’s illnesses could have been linked to toxic waste in the town.

After the closure of the steelworks, the chemical by-products of the industrial steelmaking were removed from toxic ponds scattered across the steel site and moved into a quarry that was later reclaimed to build Rockingham Motor Speedway.

A 2009 court case was successful in winning compensation for a number of local families whose children’s birth defects had been caused by the hazardous waste, which one expert said hung over parts of the town as a ‘toxic soup’.

NNC, which replaced the former Corby Borough Council in 2021, has put out a statement in recent days which says:

“North Northamptonshire Council has been approached by a group of residents requesting information about the number of childhood cancer cases recorded for children living in Corby. They are interested in whether there are high rates of childhood cancer in Corby, and whether there are any areas within Corby that have particularly high rates.

The data that is needed to answer this question is collected by the NHS, and as a Public Health service we can request access to that data. The data itself is called Hospital Episodes Statistics, and it allows us to look at small areas of one to three thousand residents. These areas are called Local Super Output Areas (LSOAs).

We have asked for data at this level for any cancer in a child aged 0-19 years and we have asked for that for all of the North Northamptonshire Council area. This will mean we can compare Corby and areas within Corby to the rest of North Northamptonshire. The NHS data can only be provided for up to a 10-year period, and so the analysis will cover any cancer in a child that was recorded between 2014 and 2024.

The data we receive is for hospital episodes and not for individual children and so we have had to carefully go through that data to identify and report individual cases. This is important as some children may have many hospital visits linked to their diagnosis and treatment, and some may have fewer. By identifying individual children, we get a clearer picture of the number of cases of cancer.

This process of verifying the data does take some time and it is also important that we check the data with our NHS partners to make sure we don’t miss any cases or count any more than once in error. If the data is not correct, then the findings of the analysis could be misleading.

At the same time, we are also working with colleagues at the National Cancer Registry to see what other data could be made available to us, because this both helps us check that our analysis of the Hospital Episode Statistics is accurate, and helps us identify if there are other ways of identifying any clusters of cancer cases, should they exist.

When we have checked all the data, we will map the findings and look at whether there are any significant variations. We will then share our findings initially with the residents who asked for this work to be done, and then we will share them publicly.

We are at the stage of checking and verifying the data with our partners to make sure it is accurate and has captured all the individual cases of childhood cancer. It is very important that this aspect of the work is done correctly, and we will be very rigorous in that process. It is also important to note that although this analysis will help to highlight any areas of variation in rates of childhood cancer, it will not identify the cause of any variation.”

“North Northamptonshire Council acknowledges the devastating impact that childhood cancer has on children, their families and the local community. We are committed to doing all we can to respond to concerns raised by our residents.”

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Alison Gaffney, who is leading a group of families affected by childhood cancers, says the analysis is a first step.

Her own son Fraser was born in 2016 and diagnosed with leukaemia in 2018, undergoing a stemcell transplant.

She said:

“We are just hoping the council will release the results as soon as possible. We were also hoping we could look at the data ourselves before the council analysed it, but that has not been possible.

“We are disappointed that only data from the past ten years is being looked at and we hope that families whose children were born before then do not feel too deflated.”

There are families coming forward who think their cancer experienced in the 1990s through to the 2000s could have been caused by the toxic waste. Niamh Haggerty was born in 1998 with a rare retinablastoma, which caused the loss of one eye, and at the weekend, Gillian Corner, spoke to the Sunday Times about her own childhood cancer in the 1990s.

After her cancer was treated, her son Lewis was born with a deformed limb in 2008.

Alison Gaffney says 50 families have filled in her questionnaire and anecdotally there are upwards of 100 families affected.

NN Journal contacted NHS England which said the data for hospital admissions goes back to 1998.

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Since airing earlier this year, the Netflix show Toxic Town has shaken Corby.

A dramatised account of a group of families’ real-life court battle to prove the reclamation of contaminated steelworks land caused their children’s birth defects, in the months since its airing, it has got many in the town talking and considering their own situations.

The original court case centred around children who had birth defects, but there is now a wider concern about what other health impacts this ‘toxic soup’ that had hung over the town during the clean up in the 1980s and 1990s has possibly caused.

There are concerns about cancers, rare conditions and heart problems.

Over the past few months NN Journal has spoken to many Corby residents who have started to question whether their illness may be connected to the town’s toxic waste.

In all of the cases reported here, there is a link between the person and the reclamation sites, either by their parents living close to the area when they were born, or working in the nearby industrial estates.

Rare conditions and cancers

Sarah McLeod was born in 1989 with her heart on the wrong side. All her major organs are also mirrored, a rare congenital condition called dextrocarida situs inverus totalis. The causes of the condition are unknown, although believed to be due to genetic changes during foetal development. Her dad was a steelworker and her mum worked in factories on the Earlstrees industrial estate.

Her condition was not picked up at birth.
She says:

“I kept getting chest infections so my mum and dad had me back and forth to the doctors, but they never had an answer, they just kept saying ‘it’s viral’. Then I had shingles when I was four, went to the doctors, and they said ‘I think there is something going on with the heart’. So they did a chest x-ray, I got sent to the heart doctor and found out I had this condition.”

At 12 she developed a heart murmur and has had pneumonia on two occasions.

She says:

“No-one knows why I have it. As a teenager I just got on with it, but when I tell people they don’t believe it and have to touch my chest.

“But the older I have become, I think ‘it is strange’. I’ve never met anyone else who has it.

“No one in my family has it - my two brothers were born fine, it has not been passed onto my three children.

“When I’ve looked into it in the past, mothers who were anti-depressants and air pollution have been mentioned.

“I used to say to my mum, ‘What did you do when you were pregnant with me?’ and she said ‘ nothing’, she can’t even swallow a paracetamol.”

Sarah knew about the court case in the 1990s, as she went to Irish dance school with Simone Atkinson, one of the original claimants, they were both born in the same year.

She says:

“Because I do not have an external deformity, mine is internal, I did not connect it. But when I watched the BBC documentary and they mentioned Shelby-Anne (Shelby is the child of Tracey and Mark Taylor and died at just four days old due to her heart not being fully formed) I just thought ‘that’s strange’. As it was to do with her heart. I thought it was just to do with hand and feet deformities. Nobody spoke about anything to do with internal organs.

“That’s why it made me wonder. I thought, ‘I was born in that time period. My dad worked for British Steel’. None of my family have got this and it is rare. There is no explanation as to why it has happened.”

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Niamh Haggerty was born in 1998 with a rare cancer in both eyes. Diagnosed at six months, she had an operation to remove her right eye aged four, after gruelling rounds of chemotherapy.

According to Cancer Research UK only 40 to 50 children are born each year with the condition. Niamh, whose family lived in Corby village Stanion when she was a baby, says there was another boy born in neighbouring Weldon village at around the same time with the same rare cancer.

She says:

“My mum noticed she could see through my pupil when the light shined into it, so in January 1999, they took me to Kettering General which said that it was just scar tissue, however they referred us to Leicester.

“Once I was diagnosed I had to go to Birmingham Children’s Hospital and Northampton every three weeks for the first eight months for chemotherapy, plus cryotherapy and laser therapy to freeze any growing tumours.

“Both of my parents had genetic testing to see if they carried the gene and later on my younger sister had the same tests and none of them carry the gene.
“We have known what happened before the show came out, but before the court case was about limbs, so my mum didn’t really think it was anything to do with it.”

Now the family question whether Niamh’s childhood cancer could be linked to the toxic waste clean up.

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Danielle Sharp had her first seizure aged seven when she was walking home from Studfall Juniors School. Four days later she had a second. After tests she was diagnosed with hypoparathyroidism, a rare condition that affects the glands in the neck. There are about 150,000 cases worldwide.

Born in 1992 in the Lloyds area of Corby (about two miles from the reclamation sites) she says she was sickly as a young child and would get tired very easily. She had a constant thirst for milk.

She said she has had the rarest symptoms of the condition, and as a child it was rare a fortnight went by without having a seizure. She had low magnesium, vitamin D and calcium.

She has suffered brain damage from her seizures and today she has joint pain and hand cramps which means at times she cannot open them.

She said:

“The problem with the condition is that it’s not very well known. I didn’t know what it was, nor did my mum, because the doctors just spoke in medical jargon. I’ve been in doctors surgery’s where I’ve witnessed doctor’s google my condition.”

Aged 21 she was put under an Oxford based specialist endocrinologist. Genetic testing has found it is not an inherited condition and her own children do not have it.

“He did a genetics test on me and it was not auto-immune. It has not been passed to my kids.

“I am leaning to thinking my illness has been caused by Corby’s toxic waste, because we could not find the reason why I had the condition.”

Terry Sandy’s son Ben was born in 1994 at KGH with a rare condition called Hirshsprung’s Disease. This affected his nervous system and intestines and as a newborn he underwent a major operation to remove part of his large intestine. He suffered cardiac arrest during the operation.

At the time Terry and the family were living in Gretton, just a mile from the reclamation site and he worked for Corby Borough Council as a building inspector.

He says:

“Everybody could remember the dust because all the cars were covered in it. I would drive past that site, four times a day, backwards and forwards to work. My ex-wife would drive past if daily. Everybody knew your cars were getting dusted up and just accepted it while the clean up operation is in full swing, you are going to get that.”

He says he had a ‘niggling’ feeling when the original families were fighting their case that his son’s health issues may be connected, and after Toxic Town it has made him have concerns again about the cause of his son’s condition.

“I think potentially it could well be, at that particular time we could not put a finger on why that would happen to him.”

Limb defects

18 families won compensation from Corby Borough Council for their birth defects, but the numbers who were originally part of the case had at one point stood at more than 40.

The legal firm Collins Solicitors whittled down the numbers, as a calculated move to try and make winning the case easier. A link between airborne waste particles and birth defects had not been proven before and so the law firm decided to go forward with a cluster.

That means that some original families did not get compensation, or justice. Since Toxic Town was aired more families with birth defects have come forward.

Adam Stanford was born at KGH in July 1991 with deformities of both feet. His dad used to fly model airplanes on land close to the clean up site (on a site which is now part of Rockingham Speedway) and his mum would visit the site while pregnant with Adam. The family think this is where they could have been exposed to the toxic waste particles.

As a baby he had leg braces, then wore special boots until the age of five and he had therapy until 12 months. He can only walk at a two mile an hour pace, has never been able to run and is in pain every day.

As a child he grew up on the Lincoln area of Corby, a housing estate, which then, as now, was plagued by crime and his club feet meant he was a target.

“I used to get into fights because I grew up on Canada Square, people remember what that place was like. I couldn’t run. People would start on me. What am I going to do? I can’t waddle away at two mile an hour. I got jumped loads of times when I was a teenager.”

He was part of the original legal action before solicitor Des Collins reduced the claimant numbers.

He said:

“Recently I have become mad, because it is a loss. I am from a poor town where a life changing amount of money would have made a big difference to me. I was just kind of ignored while the rest [of the claimants] went through.”

Twins Emily and Shannon Pickaver were born prematurely at Kettering General in February 2001, at 28 weeks, Emily weighing less than two pounds and her sister slightly heavier. Both were born with congenital talipes equinovarus, commonly known as club feet, where the feet are twisted inwards. A family member overheard a nurse caring for the babies at the hospital say ‘there’s another one from Corby’.

Today aged just 24 and after years of operations and procedures Emily, who now lives in the South West with her mum and sister, is considering having an amputation.

She says:

“I have never known a day without pain. I have to take strong daily painkillers and have severe tiredness. When we watched Toxic Town, it just clicked. The programme really upset us and we would like to know if our health problems have been caused by toxic waste.”

The twins mum Jackie was working at the former Nielsens Clearing House coupon depot on the Weldon Industrial estate when she was pregnant. The reclamation trucks with their open backs would pass daily. She says at the time of their birth no reason was put forward for their conditions and after their premature birth ‘everything was just a whirlwind’. Both girls underwent procedures, having their legs broken and reset, wearing corrective bars on their feet and suffering splints that made their ankles bleed.

Jackie says:

“It was traumatic for us all. We just got by day by day. Today their bones are a mess.”

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Heart conditions

Jack Perrin was born in 1997 with a hole in his heart and has undergone three operations since birth. He will need to have follow up ops every ten to 15 years.

His dad Alan worked for the contractor Weldon Plant, the primary firm that undertook the cleanup, as a groundworker on the Asda supermarket scheme (on the site of the former blast furnace).

On one occasion an unknown substance on his work trousers melted a hole in it overnight.

Jack says his family have often wondered if there could be a link between his heart problems and the toxic waste.

“There seems to be a large demographic in Corby of people with heart defects. Maybe I’m just connecting the dots - but I think there is something more to it.”

“It has not stopped me from doing anything, but it has always played on my mind. We talk about the physical aspects but I feel like the mental aspects are more damning.”

Taylor Stratford grew up on Stephenson Way, just behind the former steelworks site. Born in 1994. She has Wollf-Parkinson-White syndrome and her heart has two pathways.

It wasn’t until she was in her mid 20s that she was diagnosed after suffering palpitations. She has a device in her chest that sends data back to the hospital and has undergone surgery. She also has scoliosis, arthritis, missing cartilage in her legs and was born with an extra finger.

She said:

“I watched the BBC documentary [which aired in 2020] and I was saying to my mum ‘Does that not make you think?’ We literally lived at the back of the steelworks site.”

What is happening now?

In recent weeks the campaign to find out whether the legacy of Corby’s toxic waste has had a much bigger health impact than was originally thought, has been gathering pace.

Two mothers from the original case, Tracey Taylor and Maggie Mahon, whose person stories featured in Toxic Town series, have been leading efforts to bring others forward and are calling for a full investigation of what happened.

This month they gathered 30 families at a Corby social club and heard people’s stories. It was reported on the national ITV news.

Des Collins, the original solicitor, has joined the families in calling for a public inquiry and in the past two weeks Corby councillor Mark Pengelly has taken the issue back into the council chamber.

He has told the senior officers and the director of public health Jane Bethea that they need to listen to the families and start to investigate, warning of what happened two decades ago when the local authority dismissed the families’ concerns after the birth defects cluster was first exposed in the Sunday Times.

A group of families with children born in the recent decade who have cancer have also met with the public health director and asked her to look into local cancer rates.

Tracey Taylor, whose daughter Shelby died days after birth, says she is now more hopeful the called for public inquiry will happen.

She said:

“We just want to help people get justice.

“All the people say the same thing, they feel guilty and can’t move on with their lives. We’re helping them and are helpful we can move this forward.”

A spokesperson for North Northamptonshire Council said:

“The Public Health team have conducted an analysis of hospital data from the past ten years. This assessed cancer data for each district of North Northamptonshire, and for small areas within these. The small areas that were compared are known as lower super output areas (‘LSOAs’). LSOAs are used in the census and usually have between 1,000 and 3,000 residents.

“The team used the hospital data to infer the rate of children living with cancer per number of children living in the districts and LSOAs. This analysis is almost complete, and we will be discussing the findings initially with the group that made the request.”

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Many thanks to the families for sharing their stories. If you think you could have been affected by the issues in this article, please contact Sarah Ward on the details below.

Tracey Taylor also has created an online form that families who think they could be affected, can fill in.

Before you read this article, if you are new to NN Journal sign up for our free, independent news about Northants.

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When she was pregnant with her first child Shelby, Tracey Taylor, worked at the Euromax factory on the Earlstrees industrial estate in Corby. Joining the firm straight from finishing school in 1989, by the time of her pregnancy in 1996, a red dust had been hanging in the air for a couple of years.

Tracey says:

“We noticed these sand storms more and more. On days when it was really hot - it would just fly over. It was coming off the trucks as they were driving around. None of them were covered. When it was wet it was like you were going through a slurry pit.”

Tracey’s office desk was covered in the red dust, which would leave a mark when a coffee cup was moved.

“Because it looked like mud and we were on an industrial estate, you just assumed it was mud dust. You don’t expect it to be toxic waste. Our lunches were uncovered. We were eating and drinking it.”1

One day on a regular lunchtime walk to the nearby ponds, Tracey saw barrels stamped with skull and cross bones, floating in the water. There were dead birds and fish nearby.

In mid April 1996, Tracey gave birth to Shelby at Kettering General Hospital. Her heart was not fully formed and one ear was deformed. She was moved to John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford for specialist treatment, but tragically died three days later.

Working at Euramax with Tracey was Peter Ford, whose wife Susan was also pregnant with their second son Connor. He was born four months after Shelby and had no fingers on his left hand.

Less than two miles away from where Tracey and Peter worked, in Rowlatt Road, a pregnant Maggie Mahon, had to beat her husband Derek’s work clothing against the back wall of their house, when he came home from his daily shifts as one of the truck drivers moving the soil from the contaminated land.

In July 1997 her second child Sam was born. He was born with one foot turned inwards, known as a club foot.

The dust was being caused by the clean up operation of former steel works land, but the expectant mothers, like the majority of the town, did not know that the sludge being transported around the town throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, in open trucks, was toxic and harmful to their health. It contained a cocktail of toxic ingredients such as cadmium, lead and arsenic, the by-product produced in the decades of steel making that had built and employed Corby.

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After the steelworks closed in 1980, Corby Borough Council took on the biggest land reclamation project in Europe, acquiring 200 acres of land from British Steel and giving the main contract to Weldon Plant to clean up the contaminated land that was scattered across the North East of the town, in order to build new employment sites to shorten the growing job queues. But the clean up was mismanaged, safety procedures such as covering the trucks were not followed, some waste was dumped incorrectly and there were concerns about how the contract was being handled. After a tip off, police raided the council offices in 1996, but three years later the CPS decided there was not enough evidence for a prosecution.

But as was proved at the high court in 2009, the toxins disturbed by the clean up of the contaminated land caused some children born between 1989 and 1996 to suffer harm while in the womb. Corby Council admitted that mistakes had been made.

TV drama and BBC podcast

Today some of the mothers will lose their relative anonymity, as their stories have been fictionalised for a new Netflix drama Toxic Town. Starring big names such as Doctor Who’s Jodie Whittaker, Robert Carlyle and Corby’s own Downtown Abbey star Brendan Coyle, the four-part drama written by Jack Thorne, tells the story from before the children were born right through to their victorious court case in 2009. All of the mothers featured hope the programme will raise the health issue once more.

Tracey, who has three sons, said:

“I think the council had always tried to put across that us mothers were looking into things we shouldn’t have been. Even when they did the settlement, Chris Mallender [Corby council’s chief executive] said ‘this payment equates to £5 per household’. I think they tried to make it that us mothers were clutching at straws. “Quite a lot of us were called gold diggers and that we were in it for the money. 2

“That is why when Netflix approached, we said, ‘Yes we will do it.

“We don’t want fame, we don’t want glory, we don’t want anything. It’s the fact that there are more people who have been affected by this than they realise. This may highlight it and like us, people may sit there and put two and two together.

“And I would hate to pick the paper up in my lifetime and find history repeats itself.”

Maggie Mahon, did not share her family’s story in the media at the time for personal reasons and says their going public now is in part due to their earlier silence.
She said:

“We did think ‘We should have spoken out more’. We felt a bit victimised with the council saying ‘everyone’s council tax is going to go up’ so we felt alot of people were against us. And thought it would be nice if people knew what really happened.”

And next week a BBC local podcast will run an eight episode series called the Toxic Waste Scandal. It will be available on BBC Sounds and will be narrated by George Taylor, one of the children born with a birth defect.

How the wrongdoing first came to light

In 1999 Susan McIntyre received a knock on the door from Graham Hind, a reporter at The Times. He had been tipped off by people close to the local authority who said the clean up of the former British Steel sites was not being done safely and could be the cause of some children being born with limb deformities.

His initial story, which featured Susan and two other mothers, was then carried forward by the local media, and as more stories were written and aired in local TV and radio, more families started to come forward and approach the solicitor Des Collins who had taken on the case. During this time many of the children were having numerous painful operations to try and correct their birth defects, with many trips to hospital and some suffered bullying and taunts from other children.

Tracey Taylor became part of the legal action after catching a glimpse of the local TV news. A doctor at John Radcliffe had asked her after Shelby’s birth whether she had ever been exposed to toxic waste, a question at the time which seemed ridiculous, but when she saw the report and read that evening’s Corby Evening Telegraph, things became clear.

She said:

“Straight away, when I heard the words toxic waste, I was like, ‘hang on a minute.’ Oxford has asked if we had been exposed to toxic waste, and the more I thought about it, and following the lorries, all the pieces just fell into place quite quickly, that evening. It was just too much of a coincidence. I said to my mum ‘I’ve got so much running around in my head. I think that’s what has happened to Shelby.’”

As the local media continued to cover the plight of the families and their legal team’s battle for information from the council, the numbers of families grew to more than 40, although in the end only 18 families were part of the case.

Maggie’s son Sam was one of the final claimant group and the Mahon family joined the case after reading about it in the local paper.

Maggie says:

“When I read the newspaper reports about the reclamation, I said to Derek, ‘Did you work there? And he was like, ‘Yes I’ve worked on and off of those sites for years. They had shared work vans, which I would go in as well. I did not know what they were moving, maybe that was ignorance on both of our parts.”

Maggie continues:

“I was angry and I thought, if this has happened I am going to fight for my child.

“From a week old, it was constant treatments, splints, bars, operations. It was ongoing. But I brought him up to be positive and not to dwell on it.”

Maggie thinks that because of its industrial past, people in Corby did not really question the mud on the roads.

She said:

“We had lived with the pollution of the steelworks, my mum used to have to go and get the nappies off the line, as there was black dust.”

Between the first Times story in 1999 and the court case in 2000s the legal team, aided by drop offs of mystery documents from those with links to the authority and commissioning their own experts to debunk local health reports, built their case, which would lead the high court judge to decide there was a link between the toxins and the birth defects. It was a landmark case.

As Shelby had died, her claim was not taken forward with the other children, who had suffered limb birth defects, although Tracey did take to the stand at the high court and give crucial evidence about the dust that she was exposed to during her working day.

She says she does not have any bad feelings about not receiving compensation, as she takes comfort in the fact that Shelby’s short life has helped other children secure justice. Herself and her husband Mark, never received a written apology from Corby Borough Council.

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Is the town still suffering the health impacts?

The three mums featured in the drama that NN Journal has spoken to feel strongly the mismanaged clean up has had other health impacts on Corby’s community. They have had health issues in their immediate family and know of friends and former colleagues who worked in the area who have suffered chronic illnesses and cancers.

Tracey says:

“Nobody knows where the toxic waste has been dumped, whether it was containment cells done properly? How long do they last? The documentation is missing. If anybody wants to build on that or dig it up, is anybody going to say, ‘hang on a minute’. We have to look into this because there are containment cells with toxic waste in.

“All of us mums have said ‘It is a sitting time bomb. Unless somebody acts now and things are looked at and documented, it is going to repeat itself’.

“It is still a big jigsaw puzzle and all the pieces need to come together. Stuff needs to be put in place to stop this happening in the future.”

Writer Jack Thorne told NN Journal, he hopes Toxic Town will “encourage councils to think twice about some of their methods and how to answer the need for growth versus the need to keep people healthy.”

Asked why he thinks it takes so long for wronged groups to get justice in the England, he said:

“I think that what happened in the 1980s in terms of the destruction of the unions, the destruction of solidarity is something we are still paying the price for today and what happened was a lot of people were left in penury and survival at any price became the code word and that London was allowed to grow and everything else was sort of allowed to sink. And it was a case of, if you are living in those areas you are lucky to have a job.

“They [the former borough council] were aware there was red tape they needed to push out of the way and perhaps not enough consideration was given to what that red tape was there for.”

NN Journal asked North Northamptonshire Council (which replaced the former council in 2001) whether it is currently monitoring or investigating any of the former steelworks land and received this reply:

In 2001, Officers from the former Corby Borough Council carried out a review all of all sites in Corby that could be identified as potentially contaminated land, in accordance with the legislative requirements at the time, and risk rated them to assess those which could have a negative impact on human health, using the source-pathway-receptor pollutant linkage model. The resulting ‘Programme for Inspection and Arrangements for Detailed Inspections’ was detailed in chapter 7 of the subsequently produced Contaminated Land Strategy, which has now been superseded by the North Northamptonshire Contaminated land strategy, available on the Councils website. Those areas that required remediation, under Part IIa of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, were remediated. The funding for this remediation, provided by DEFRA is no longer available to Local Authorities, so remediation of sites is now mainly through the planning process.

When a planning application is received, Officers of Environmental Protection within Environmental Health are consulted and they will review the historic maps of the site to ascertain the likelihood of any previous potentially contaminative use of the site, as well as considering the proposed end use (commercial/residential etc) to make a decision as to whether a contaminated land investigation is required. The requirements for such investigations are contained in the Environment Agency Guidance Documents Land contamination risk management.

North Northamptonshire Council is also the holder of an Environmental Permit for a former landfill site based within the former steelworks site. Compliance with the conditions of the permit are regulated by the Environment Agency – gas and water sampling takes place on a yearly basis as part of the requirements of the permit.

The legal definition of contaminated land is set out in the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and the likelihood of a site meeting any of the criteria is low. Very few sites have been determined as contaminated land nationally and none of these sites are in Corby.

Each sovereign authority has identified a number of potentially contaminated sites based on an inspection of the district. This information is commercially confidential and incomplete. Any land identified as potentially contaminated does not mean that contamination is actually present. The birth defects case was a private, civil action taken by individuals against the former Corby Borough Council. This was not an action brought under the contaminated land regime as per Part IIa of the Environmental Protection Act 1990.

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Today NN Journal is starting a new investigation into the impacts of the contaminated land clean up.

And we need the help of readers and those who have lived and worked in Corby.

If you were involved in the legal action but did not become part of the final claimant group; worked in the reclamation or for the former Corby Borough Council; were employed in in the local health sector; have any information, reports or concerns, please get in touch at sarahward@nnjournal.co.uk or by calling 07887 500545.

All information will be treated in confidence.

A new report looking at contaminated land across North Northamptonshire makes no mention of Corby’s toxic past and reveals that only one site in the area is officially registered as contaminated.

In the late 1980s and 1990s Corby carried out the biggest land reclamation in Europe when it cleaned up land that had been used to store toxic chemicals created by the town’s steel industry.

Two decades later a group of families won a legal action against the former Corby Borough Council after a judge ruled their children’s birth defects had been caused by the mismanagement of the toxic waste clean up, which had allowed particles to escape into the air and pollute the town.

However a report that will be signed off by the council in coming weeks says nothing about any contaminated sites in Corby, only listing a former landfill site in Irchester as a contaminated area.

The omission was raised at a meeting of the executive advisory panel yesterday, by Cllr Kevin Watt who represents the Corby rural area.

When he queried why Corby’s recent history of land reclamation was not listed he was told by environmental protection officer Mandy Dennis:

“The purpose is not to list all the contaminated sites, it is just to say how we would go through the inspection process.

“There are quite a lot of contaminated sites in Corby and the other areas; we are not ignoring them, we know where we are, but we don’t list them.”

When Cllr Watt asked for the list of all sites (which had previously been put together by the former councils of Corby, Kettering, Wellingborough and East Northants) the officer said the list was ‘commercially sensitive’ but she could not see why councillors could not have access to them.

It is the responsibility of councils to have an inspection strategy for land that may be contaminated. However they do not have to carry out a proactive inspection of land and may wait until it comes up for development for any remediation.

At the meeting the officer also revealed that any homes in the area built prior to regulations introduced in 2000 had not had the land investigated and the authority had a list of homes that had been built on potentially contaminated sites. 

Read our obituary of the whistleblower who helped Corby families get justice.

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News in brief

Phillip Dafter has been found guilty of murdering his wife Diane at an attack at their Northampton flat last October.

Dafter fled to London Euston after the attack on his wife at their home in Lawrence court and after stabbing himself handed himself in to police. 

Diane, 36, had been stabbed five times and a post-mortem examination found she had died from a single stab wound to the heart.

During a trial at Northampton Crown Court, Dafter denied murder but admitted to manslaughter, arguing loss of control and diminished responsibility.

Dafter will be sentenced on May 19.

Senior investigating officer, detective chief inspector Adam Pendlebury, said: “It is important to remember Diana Dafter for who she was. And that is so much more than just Phillip Dafter’s wife. She was a loving mother, daughter and friend. A student nurse with a real passion for care, hardworking, and someone very easy to get along with.

“Though today’s verdict will be a small comfort to her family and those who loved her, I hope it will help to know that Phillip Dafter is now facing an exceptionally long stretch in prison for what he has done.”

• Work to bring an expected £21m overspend down at the Northamptonshire Children’s Trust (NCT) has been ‘rather limited’, a council finance boss told councillors. 

North Northamptonshire Council (NNC) is set to be charged £9.2m more than it had hoped for the last financial year as West Northamptonshire Council (WNC) set to be charged around £11m more than planned.

Janice Gotts, NNC’s executive director of finance and performance, said both unitary authorities were working with the trust to bring NCT’s anticipated overspend from the planned £130m for 2022/23 down but conceded forecasting can be “problematic”. Both NNC and WNC have criticised the trust over recent months, most recently over an Ofsted inspection which rated NCT’s fostering service inadequate.

Westminster Watch

Home secretary Suella Braverman chose Northamptonshire to announce her government’s pledge to put 20,000 more police officers on the street, has been met.

The pledge was made back in 2019 and followed huge cuts to police office numbers during the austerity period from the Conservative government.

Northamptonshire now has 15 full time officers, a rise from 1,280 in 2019. 

Police and crime commissioner Stephen Mold has been raising council tax over the past few years in an effort to pay for the extra officers.

NN Events

Mayday Mayhem II is happening at the Raven Hotel in Rockingham Road, Corby, on Sunday from midday. Band Flash Peasants will be playing. Get tickets here.

House DJs Dave Pearce and Alex P will be performing at the Roadmender tonight from 8pm.

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By Sarah Ward

It wasn’t until 2004 when a brown envelope of confidential papers landed on solicitor Des Collins desk, that he knew the case he was fighting against Corby Borough Council to prove its toxic waste cleanup had caused birth defects in some local children, was winnable.

Up until that point he had been unsuccessfully trying to get documents from the authority that would give him the information he needed about the clean up of the former steelworks land - the biggest undertaking of its kind in Europe.

Following an article by the Sunday Times in 1999 which suggested there was a cluster of birth defects in the town and the deformities could have been caused by the toxic waste clean up, Collins had taken on the case on behalf of number of families. But he was finding it difficult to get the evidence he needed. The council was refusing to release paperwork about how it had managed the clean-up of toxic waste pools on former British Steel land.

But then the papers mysteriously turned up.

In the BBC Horizon programme aired in 2020, Collins recalled the moment which would prove a breakthrough for his team.

“We were scratching our heads one day when I came into the office and on my desk in a brown envelope was a lever arch file full of papers.

“It isn’t normal for secret documents to turn up - it is like something out of a John Grisham novel. You think people write this stuff and I quite like reading it, but it doesn’t happen in real life - but it did happen.”

Those documents had been provided by Sam Hagen, a former council worker and then deputy leader of the council. In the early 1990s, while working for the authority he had accused it of taking short cuts while redeveloping the former steel works land but had been ignored.

Shortly before being elected as a Labour Party Councillor for the Lloyds ward in March 1995 he received a phone call from a technical officer who was employed to supervise the clearance of the toxic ponds that were scattered around the site.

Sam told the BBC: 

“The council officer that blew the whistle told me that  the safety regulations were not being observed. They were paying fast and loose with it, in order to do the job quicker and make money. 

“And he decided as there was nothing he could do internally he had to tell somebody. Cos this lad knew that if he was known as the whistleblower he would lose his job. So he told me instead.”

Sam stored the notes and other papers he collected in his garage, and then handed them over to Des Collins after reading about the legal action.

The history

During the decades of steelmaking in Corby, thousands of tonnes of toxic waste had been created and then put into large settlement ponds, the largest of which was at Deene Quarry.

After the steel production industry ended in 1980 (putting 11,000 people out of work and seemingly imposing a death knell on the town’s economy) its council leaders led by controversial character Kelvin Glendenning, had acted fast and managed to persuade government to fund the large-scale clean up operation which would help regenerate the town.

The town was regenerated out of its steel collapse, with firms such as RS Components moving to the town and helping unemployment rates to plummet, but the clean up operation being undertaken during the late 1980s and mid 1990s was not being handled well.

Instead of the trucks that were transporting waste being covered up, as had been advised by the government’s chief environmental officer, they were open at the back and sloshing the toxic chemicals around the town’s roads. Chemicals such as arsenic and cadmium were present in the toxic lagoons and were being dropped by lorries in a sludge all throughout the routes across the town’s northern industrial estate during the eight year clean up period.

These chemicals became airborne and were ingested by the pregnant mothers causing their children to be born with deformities, largely of the hands and feet. 

In the words of contaminated land specialist Roger Braithwaite, who was employed by Des Collins to help prove the science in the legal case;

“ . . . that would have resulted in a tremendous amount of pollution, across the whole of the district. That is just basically a toxic soup of dust hanging over a town. This is not happening in even one week, or one month or even one year. It is happening over many, many years.”

In 2008 the 18 families, represented by Des Collins, won their legal action against the council after they took it to the High Court and received several millions in compensation. Sam gave evidence at the court. 

It was seen to be a landmark legal case and is often referred to as the UK’s worst case of child poisoning since Thalidomide. The council apologised for its actions and the families, who had undergone years of heartache and physical pain, finally had answers.

Sam’s personal and political life

Born in Greenock near Glasgow, Sam moved down to Corby in 1962 to work in Corby Borough Council’s parks department. Originally a parks foreman, an early job was to help develop the golf course at Priors Hall. Later he became a works manager in the council depot.

After working for the council for more than two decades, in 1995 he played a part in clearing out the old Labour guard in Corby, which had run the town for many years.

Ahead of that year’s council elections, eleven standing councillors, including the then leader Kelvin Glendenning had been de-selected by the Labour party and were now standing as a new party - Corby First. The charge against those de-selected was that they had used special powers granted in the early 1980s to speed through decisions and had never revoked them, instead using them to quash opposition.

Sam stood against a Corby First candidate and won and was then re-elected in 1999 but lost the 2003 election.

During his time as part of the ruling administration, the council’s offices were raided by the police in 1996, in connection with allegations of fraud relating to the contracts awarded by the previous Labour administration for the steel land reclamation. 

NN Journal understands Sam had been involved in the decision to call in the police.

Hundreds of thousands of documents were seized but after a three year investigation the Crown Prosecution Service decided there was no evidence to support a prosecution on charges of corruption, and insufficient evidence to pursue a prosecution on charges of conspiracy to defraud.

Sam lived in Corby until his death on October 11 this year. He had children and a number of grandchildren. He married his second wife Katherine in the 1990s. NN Journal has contacted the family to let them know we are writing this piece.

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I was a Corby reporter in the early 2000s working for the Northants Evening Telegraph and regularly reported on the families and their legal battle.

Among a number of phone calls I have taken in my years as a local reporter, I will never forget picking up the phone to Tracy Taylor, who having read a recent article I had written about other families, had thought that the death of her new born baby Shelby, who was born with severe organ deformities, could have been caused by the toxic clear up. 

She had worked in the industrial estate which had been a principal route for the open trucks that were negligently transporting toxic waste across the town.

I put the family in touch with Des Collins and she joined the case. (Unfortunately Shelby’s family were not one of those awarded compensation).

Despite the arrogance of the council in its dealings with the families and the constant assertions by then chief executive Chris Mallender that the authority had no case to answer, I always believed the children’s deformities had been caused by the clean up. I now often wonder what other damage was caused to people’s health in Corby. That is a hypothesis that has never been investigated by the health authorities.

I admire what Sam Hagen did in passing those documents to Des Collins and helping evidence the case against the council. I think it would have been very hard for the children to get the justice they deserved if he had not. Although I never spoke to him, it is clear to me he was motivated by the desire to put things right for the children whose lives were impacted by a terrible period in Corby’s history. To use Sam’s own phrase the council ‘played fast and loose’ with the health of its people.

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