More than 100 old landfills across England containing potentially hazardous material have flooded at least once this century, according to analysis by Unearthed.
Historic landfills can contain dangerous substances such as heavy metals, persistent pollutants, pharmaceuticals and industrial waste. They often lack measures such as linings that limit the risks of these pollutants affecting the surrounding environment. 
Unearthed also found over 2,600 former dump sites with potentially hazardous contents within 50m of watercourses across England.
As climate change threatens to make floods more frequent in Britain the risk of landfills leaching substances into watercourses goes up, scientists warn.
“We’ve been landfilling waste for hundreds of years, but we haven’t really considered the consequences of climate change on those historic landfills and the pollution they contain,” Professor Kate Spencer, an expert on historic landfills at Queen Mary University of London, told Unearthed.  
“We now know far more about the potentially harmful effects of the waste materials and pollutants we’ve dumped, particularly chemicals like PFAS and PCBs, and how the impacts of climate change, such as flooding, could reopen pathways for those pollutants to enter the environment,” she added. 
PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are a group of thousands of man-made chemicals that are widely used in consumer products to make them heat resistant, non-stick or stain-repellant. Exposure to some of these chemicals has been associated with cancers and health complaints, including liver disease and decreased fertility. PCBs (Polychlorinated Biphenyls) are man-made organic chemicals that were used in a variety of industrial processes, often for their flame-retardant properties. They have been phased out globally starting in the 1970s, with strict controls on their production and disposal, partly due to their links with cancer. They are among the substances known as “forever chemicals” because they take hundreds or even thousands of years to break down in the environment, meaning that even if they were dumped decades ago, they could still pose a risk to those who are exposed to them now. 
There are almost 20,000 historic landfill sites across the country, but records of what these sites contain are patchy. There is no central record of whether former landfills have been officially designated as contaminated sites, as this happens at local authority level but scientists believe they could contain hidden dangers. 
“Most of the 20,000-odd former landfill sites are likely to be quite safe and contain relatively inert waste, but some could be quite sinister,” Dr David Megson, a scientist at Manchester Metropolitan University who previously worked remediating old landfills, told Unearthed. “Historic reporting of what went into these sites wasn’t great, so in many cases, you’ve got little idea what is in there until you dig into it.”
Unearthed, working with Dr Paul Brindley at the University of Sheffield, overlaid Environment Agency (EA) flooding data onto the government’s map of historic landfills across England to identify sites that have flooded since the turn of the century.

Using the government’s dataset, Unearthed identified landfills that had closed before rules came into force in the mid-1990s to protect the environment from pollution, and those which had had at least half of their surface area flooded. We removed any landfills that have been built on or otherwise concreted over. Within this subset, Unearthed looked for landfills marked as taking potentially harmful waste, including “commercial” and “industrial”, as well as “special”waste, which requires special disposal requirements due to its potential to pollute and “liquid sludge”, which comes from industrial processes. 
The EA’s data does not record every flood event, while the historic landfills database only contains a partial record of what went into these former dump sites. Only 55% of sites in the historic landfills dataset record a “last input” date, showing when they stopped receiving waste. Owing to the patchy nature of both datasets, Unearthed’s figures are likely to be an underestimate.
Sites across the country
Historic landfills are dotted all over the country, but most people would have no idea they live near one. There are many public parks and nature reserves built on old landfills, and Unearthed identified instances where business parks and housing estates were built directly alongside or even overlapping former landfills with potentially hazardous contents that had flooded this century. 
The Green party, along with councils including Brighton & Hove, have backed ‘Zane’s law’, which aims to update the UK’s rules on toxic waste disposal. The law is named after Zane Gbangbola, a Surrey seven-year-old who died in 2014. His family believe his death was caused by toxic chemicals that entered their home when a nearby disused landfill flooded. 
Gbangbola’s family said that no environmental searches on their property had identified that the lake behind it was a former landfill site – this information only came to light after their son had died. Lavenders, the former landfill site, is not included in Unearthed’s analysis, as the historic landfills database does not record the types of waste it received or the date it closed.

Zane’s law would impose a duty on councils to record potentially contaminated sites, and to investigate and, where necessary, remediate former landfill sites. It would also make central government responsible for covering the cost of these works.
Green party peer Natalie Bennett told Unearthed: “The lack of adequate regulations on contaminated land poses a threat to human life and welfare, especially given climate breakdown, rising sea levels, increased rainfall, and flooding.”
Zane’s law would align the UK with “global best practice for the protection of communities from hazardous land,” she added. 
A ‘reactive approach’
Local authorities are required to keep a register of land that is known to be contaminated, and to inspect any sites that could be contaminated, but one expert said there has been an “erosion of funding” to do this work.
Councils used to be able to bid for money through the Contaminated Land Capital programme, which the EA administered, but this grant ended in 2017.
“Local authorities will be aware of problematic sites, but due to the lack of adequate funding, they have had to adopt a reactive approach,” explained Dr Grant Richardson, an environmental consultant specialising in landfills and contaminated land.
“If there’s no obvious risk of harm or pollution emanating from these sites, nothing will be done to investigate or remediate them unless sites come to be developed,” he added. “That means there are likely hundreds or potentially thousands of sites that have not been properly investigated that could be leaching contaminants at harmful levels into the environment.”
Councils in England are struggling with a funding gap that could reach £8bn by 2028/29, a spokesperson for the Local Government Association, a membership body for local authorities, told Unearthed, adding: “Without adequate funding, councils will continue to struggle to provide crucial services – with devastating consequences for those who rely on them.”
The central government is stepping up funding to councils, a spokesperson for Defra said.
Our investigation found confusion over who is responsible for regulating and monitoring historic landfills. In two instances, local authorities who Unearthed contacted about potentially hazardous former landfills in their regions told usthat the EA was responsible – even though the agency has stated publicly that it is “not the regulator of former landfill sites”.
A spokesperson for the EA told Unearthed: “While the responsibility for dealing with contaminated land in England, including historic landfills, lies with local authorities, we continue to support them in carrying out their duties set out clearly under environmental regulations.”
Information on who holds the licence for these historic landfills is lacking. Out of the 105 landfills that flooded since 2000, 13 have no licence holder listed at all. Across the country, more than 8,600 – 43% – of historic landfills have no licence holder listed and no date for when a licence was surrendered. 
Charles Watson, founder of environmental campaign group River Action, said: “Environmental protection in the UK has been subject over the last decade and a half to round after round of defunding from government. However, failure to provide adequate funding to regulate something as basic as landfill sites that could be leaching highly hazardous waste is all the more shocking.
“If our regulators can’t sort out how to protect us from pollutants that in theory have already been ‘safely’ disposed of, then we have little hope of ever seeing a holistic approach to combatting the wider sources of water pollution.”
Original article here>>

Graphics by Revisual Labs

By KYE GBANGBOLA


ACROSS this country there are families suffering from living in proximity to contaminated land and polluted water.
The suffering varies, from birth defects, as we saw in the award winning Netflix drama series ‘Toxic Town’, to miscarriages, low birth weight, cancers, tumours, respiratory issues, skin irritations, neurological deficiencies, infertility and cardio vascular disease.
It renders some homes and gardens too smelly and unbearable to stay in, homes can be unmortgageable, children can be doubled up in agony in nursery playgrounds as fumes from spontaneously combusting fires on landfills, drift across neighbourhoods.
The acclaimed programme ‘Britain’s Toxic Secret’ which was shown on BBC2 last week, now available on iPlayer features the fight for justice of the family of Zane Gbangbola and the struggle for Zane’s Law legislation.
The programme shows also cases, evidence, and public, experts, and political interest in ending abuses perpetrated on the public.
It states, authorities not considering the impact on human health is criminal.
The case of my son, Zane Gbangbola, is horrific! The killing of a child is horrific!
Zane was an innocent seven- year-old, killed in the brutal early hours of 8th February 2014, when his home was filled with the deadly toxic, invisible, odourless nerve agent Hydrogen Cyanide gas (HCN).
His mother, Nicole, found Zane collapsed, she screamed for help, as she tried to resuscitate her child, and dial 999, not knowing her own life was in mortal danger, she could collapse at any moment.
The HCN was detected by specialist HAZMAT, in a major incident, necessitating evacuating the area, and decontaminating more than 50 emergency workers.
A bridge over the River Thames at Chertsey, Surrey, was closed off, and the area evacuated for weeks.
Hydrogen Cyanide was the gas used to kill people in WWII gas chambers.
Zane’s father Kye was found in cardiac arrest, he didn’t recover, his flesh blistered and peeled off his head and back, and he was diagnosed paralysed due to Hydrogen Cyanide poisoning.
Kye and Nicole are ordinary people like you, living in an ordinary street, but unknown to them, the field next door with a lake, was secret landfill.
According to the BMJ (British Medical Journal) 80% of people in this country live within 2km of landfill.
Zane’s case is dubbed ‘The most toxic cover-up of them all’. It’s a scandal in plain sight, public authorities claim Zane’s father poisoned himself and the family with carbon monoxide (CO), but Freedom of Information requests, and expert reports revealed no CO was detected, and there was no CO source in Zane’s home.
The toxin present was very high levels of Hydrogen Cyanide.
Truth About Zane has mass union (TUC, FBU, CWU, NEU, Unison, Unite, NASUWT, HLN), and cross-party support, calling on the Government to grant Zane an Independent Panel Inquiry with full disclosure; this is how Hillsborough families, and Daniel Morgan, got the truth.

​118,000 people have signed Zane’s petition, following Zane being featured as a burning injustice in a Labour Party Manifesto. Zane’s parents speak out knowing others in this country are in danger.
Following a mass movement of grass roots support, amongst local authorities across the country, they are calling for Zane’s Law.
Zane’s Law will protect Britain’s communities from injury, harm and irremediable death, and is scheduled for a Parliamentary Summit on June 11th it proposes:
1. Every local authority must keep a full, regularly updated Register of Land that may be contaminated within their boundary.
2. The Environment Agency must keep a full, public National Register of Contaminated Land to be regularly updated by information from local authorities.
3. The Registers of Land must be accessible and available for inspection by the general public. Relevant local authorities must fully inspect any land registered that may be contaminated and must fully remediate or enforce remediation of any land which poses harm to public safety, or which pollutes controlled waters.*
4. Relevant local authorities must be responsible for inspecting previously closed landfill sites and fully remediating them, or enforcing their remediation, when they pose a risk of significant harm to people or controlled waters.
5. The Government must take full responsibility for providing the necessary funds for local authorities to meet these new requirements, following the ‘polluter pays’ principle: to recover costs as appropriate where those responsible for the pollution can be identified.
* Controlled waters are groundwater or surface water intended for human consumption.
Spontaneously, a coalition of over 20 landfill and polluted water campaigns have come together calling for the need to protect against totally preventable harms now and in the future.
Some of these abuses involve public authorities meant to protect the public, being enablers, and in some cases, local authorities are the cause of the harms as found for Corby Council in the Netflix drama series, ‘Toxic Town’.
A child is featured in the BBCs ‘Britain’s Toxic Secret’, where lead leached from contaminated land into her garden, contaminants poisoned her as she played in the soil rendering her non verbal, poor mobility, and presenting as severely autistic. Her family stopped garden play, soil ingestion and dermal contact, and she totally recovered.
Dr Ian Mudway, from Imperial College London, says the global burden of elevated lead exposure causes 0.5 to one million deaths a year.
Addressing Clean Air; as we see with the campaign for Ella Kissi Debrah, Clean Water; Feargal Sharkey’s campaign, and the third leg of the stool is ‘What Lies Beneath our Feet’ in the ground, the toxic legacy, emanating from industrialisation;
Harm from landfill is totally preventable; the Environmental Protection Act requires sites that are a ‘risk to health’ to be prioritised. We should listen to people harmed, and through enforceable law; Zane’s Law, requires the hazards to be investigated, the data collected, proper evaluation, and action taken to protect them.
This approach is achieved in progressive countries, and it is endorsed by United Nations resolutions.
Laws should not allow people to be killed and harmed, placing profit before people is criminal, and perpetrators must be held to account.
Zane’s Law incorporates the Polluter Pays principle, reducing the cost burden on the Environment Agency; ensuring the community harmed, and the wider public are not burdened with costs of remediation, where this may be required, and those harmed, are remedied accountably by the perpetrator.
Until we have Zane’s Law families are left at risk! These risks are morally repugnant, reprehensible, and criminal.
Sir Thomas Bingham said: ‘Foul play, abuse, and inhumanity has no place in law’.
Abusive scandals against ordinary people, Post Office, Grenfell, Stephen Lawrence, Infected Blood, Daniel Morgan, Nuclear Veterans, Zane, must end.
The public are awake to the patronising disposition of unaccountable power, and see the need to position laws that protect us all, we owe this to the dead, injured, survivors, and their families.
We must start to rebuild public trust in our public authorities.
If you believe little children should not go to bed at night and be poisoned in their sleep, join us in a short Zoom call on Workers Memorial Day 28th April 2025 at 6pm to 6.20pm.
Daniel Kebede, General Secretary of the NEU, brings Britain’s Andy Burnham, Mayor of Manchester, together with Zane’s Parents on a day we honour the dead, and fight for the living. You can register at https://neu-org-uk.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_jxzFToKYRKmhq94RPlMrqA#/registration.
Do feel free to share. Lives are at risk if we don’t get off our backsides and act.
‘Britain’s Toxic Secret’, makes clear, the protection of our communities, and the environment is urgent. Zane’s parents say ‘the hardest part is missing our little boy, then, worrying whether the government even care about people and children harmed by toxic landfill.’

Sir Keir Starmer is facing mounting pressure to honour his promise to launch a public inquiry into claims of a Government cover-up over a schoolboy who died from toxic fumes.
For years, Starmer has repeatedly backed calls for a Hillsborough-style inquiry into the death of seven-year-old Zane Gbangbola, pledging to 'get to the truth' of the tragedy.
But since coming to power the Prime Minister has been accused of stonewalling the boy's devastated family by failing to deliver on his pledge to help them seek justice.


Little Zane died during flooding after the Thames burst its banks in Chertsey, Surrey, in 2014. It is suspected that lethal hydrogen cyanide gas seeped in from an old military landfill site.
However a coroner's inquest in 2016 blamed Zane's death on carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a petrol pump used to clear floodwater from his home.

Now his parents are ramping up pressure on the Prime Minister and tomorrow [MON] - on what would have been Zane's 18th birthday - they will hand-deliver a special 'birthday card' to Downing Street asking Starmer to honour his promise by granting an Independent Panel Inquiry into the cause of their son's death.
His father, Kye Gbangbola, who was paralysed in the same incident that killed his son, said: 'Now that Sir Keir at last has the power to grant our request, we hope he will stand by his promise.'

He added: 'Really we were hoping that in his first 100 days we would have been granted that inquiry but clearly that has not happened, so this feels like our last ditch attempt.'
Zane's mother, Nicole Lawler, said: 'We just want the truth for our son. We don't want anyone else to have to suffer what we are suffering. The truth must come out.'
Zane's parents will be joined by Ian Murray, the President of the Fire Brigades Union, and together they will be handing the PM a petition signed by more than 118,000 people demanding an inquiry.
The Labour party previously pledged to call an inquiry into Zane's death in its 2019 election manifesto, but that was dropped in the recent election.
In 2020, Starmer told a meeting in the House of Lords that he wanted an inquiry, adding: 'In light of the tragedy the one thing deserved was a full and effective investigation into what happened.
'That didn't happened because at the inquest there wasn't that fearless quest for the truth but a narrow inquiry into the cause of death.'
Documents revealed by The Mail on Sunday showed that hydrogen cyanide had been detected in Zane's home three times - but no carbon monoxide was found.
Despite this, a coroner ruled that the schoolboy was poisoned by carbon monoxide after Spelthorne Borough Council fought for years against requests from Zane's parents for tests.
A Defra spokesman said: 'The case of Zane Gbangbola is tragic, and our thoughts remain with the Gbangbola family.
'Throughout the inquest into his death the Environment Agency and others provided detailed evidence to assist the independent coroner in reaching his conclusions.'
​Original article here >>

I’m so pleased to have been invited to write about the Truth About Zane (TAZ) Campaign for the Green Party Women (GPW) website. One of GPW’s key aims this year is raising women’s voices. Excellent. I’m raising my voice for Zane.
Truth! Justice! No More Deaths from Toxic Waste! Three urgent demands we’re crying out to be heard in the name of Zane Gbangbola, son of Kye and Nicole, who died in February 2014, when he was only 7-years-old, during terrible flooding at his home in Chertsey, Surrey.
Yet it wasn’t floodwater that carried this much-loved little boy away, but Hydrogen Cyanide (HCN) poisoning, detected at high levels in his home by the HAZMAT Fire and Rescue team on the night he died. His Daddy, Kye, is now  a rest-of– his-life wheelchair user, with a diagnosis of ‘Rhabdomyolysis due to Hydrogen Cyanide’, from the same incident – a diagnosis made by his Consultant Clinical Neurophysiologist.
So, why at Zane’s Inquest, held two years after his death, did the coroner find that Zane died of carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty petrol pump? Good question. The Fire and Rescue team did find a petrol pump at Zane’s home that night, but they logged it in the National Incident Recording System as having been found ‘cold and unused’. They had also tested for Carbon Monoxide (CO2), but none was detected, which fact they also logged.
Despite this clear evidence, on the morning after Zane died, the police publicly announced that CO2 poisoning from a faulty petrol pump was the most likely cause of Zane’s death. The announcement came hard on the heels of an urgently called emergency COBRA meeting, and before any investigation had begun.
The CO2/ faulty pump theory continued, unswervingly, to be the authorities’ official ‘line’ right the way through to the coroner’s verdict, given in 2016, which confirmed the same. Kye and Nicole (Zane’s Mummy) were not listened to when they repeatedly said that they had not used the petrol pump, that it was faulty (a fact confirmed by the coroner’s own pump expert at the inquest) and that they’d only hired it as a back-up. Their statements were ignored, and they were accused of lying. Worse still, the implication that they were ’negligent parents’ was stuck on them. Disgraceful! Nothing could have been further from the truth.
More and more evidence has since emerged that the land next to Zane’s home was a historic landfill site, and that the land is contaminated. Post-war, it was commandeered by the MOD for amphibious tank testing (munitions), and in the 1960s thousands of tons of experimental waste were dumped there.
Kye and Nicole also discovered, shockingly, that the local authority knew all this, and that four years before Zane died, they’d advised the Environment Agency to put a gas proof membrane into a new property they were building, right next door to Zane’s home. The gas proof membrane was recommended following a report made from a desk top study, assessing the land, which had concluded that the land posed an ‘Unacceptable risk’ with a ‘high risk of migrating landfill gasses’, capable of causing ‘significant harm, serious injury and capable of causing death.’  The local authority kept quiet about the report, refused to test the land further, which had been strongly recommended, and failed to inform local residents that they were at risk. Now, that does sound like negligence!
None of this crucial evidence, however, was heard at Zane’s inquest. The coroner had determined that Zane’s death did not touch on ‘matters of public interest’ and therefore did not warrant an Article 2 type inquest, which would have required a jury, and would have put the verdict on Zane’s death into the jury’s hands. By making this decision, he awarded himself, as coroner, absolute power to determine which evidence was heard at the inquest and which was not. There was zero ‘parity of arms’. Kye and Nicole were denied legal aid three times in the period leading up to the inquest, while all other parties were represented by top QCs, including the coroner himself.
The Fire Brigade Union have stood solidly next to Kye, Nicole, and the TAZ Campaign, questioning the coroner’s verdict and calling for a full and fearless Independent Panel Inquiry to determine the truth of what happened to Zane. So have many other organisations and political parties, including the Green Party, trade unions and thousands of individuals. Our petition calling for an Independent Panel Inquiry for Zane, was delivered by Kye and Nicole, together with Matt Wrack (then General Secretary of the FBU), to No.10 Downing Street, in October 2022, on what would have been Zane’s 16th birthday. The petition, signed by over 117,000 people, has been completely ignored by the government.
Andy Burnham’s (Mayor of Manchester) ‘Hillsborough Law’, now the ‘Public Authority Accountability Bill’, would reform coronial law, preventing the cruel injustices that have been perpetrated on the Hillsborough families, and now on Zane’s family. The Bill is still waiting to be passed into law. We can only hope that if Sir Keir Starmer becomes PM at the next election, he will do the right thing at last – speed the passage of this Bill and immediately grant an IPI to uncover the truth about Zane and the landfill next to his home.

Natalie Bennett has been supporting TAZ since I invited her to meet Kye and Nicole in 2016. She’s attended many events we’ve organised since then, including one she arranged herself, at the House of Lords. At Cop 26, together with Kye and Nicole, Natalie launched a new branch of the TAZ campaign ‘Zane’s Law’, at a Peace and Justice event hosted by Jeremy Corbyn.
‘Zane’s Law’ aims to close loopholes in the Environment Act 2012, by tightening up authorities’ obligations in relation to the registration and remediation of landfill sites and public health safety. And the law would require the government to provide the necessary funding and resources, following the polluter pays principle, to enable this work to be carried out. Zane’s law would be the first progressive UK law in decades to provide enforceable protection for local communities endangered or harmed by toxic landfill and polluted waters: A law to protect our children now, and in the future, from the dangers of contaminated land.
I tabled a motion to define and support ‘Zane’s Law’ for the October 2023 GPEW conference. The motion made it onto the agenda but wasn’t debated. However, I succeeded in getting the ‘Campaigns Committee’ on board, who have been immensely supportive in helping to promote ‘Zane’s Law’ as a GPEW national campaign. We created a resources pack, a dedicated website, and I set up a ‘Make Toxic Landfills Safe’ petition. Tom Scott’s support (chair of the committee) was especially invaluable. We included the as yet unheard ‘Zane’s Law’ conference motion in the resources pack, as a ‘model motion’ for campaigners/councillors to present to their local councils.
In Lewes, where I live, 17 Green councillors form the majority on Lewes’s Tory-free District Council. With the resources pack now launched, and the website and petition live, my friend and colleague, Councillor Imogen Makepeace* (see note at end of article), took the motion forward and it was included for debate at a full Lewes District Council meeting on Monday 19th February.
Kye travelled to Lewes to be with us for this momentous occasion. Imogen spoke brilliantly, the motion was carried unanimously, and a standing ovation from all the other councillors followed… it was a very emotional moment I can tell you!
Since then, four more councils have passed the motion and hopefully there’ll be more to come. Special tribute to Green Cllr Kerry Pickett at Brighton & Hove City Council, Green Cllr Gabe Crisp at Adur Council, Green Cllr Rebecca Aldham at Stroud Council and Green Cllr Polly Gray at Rother District Council. Thank you!
Since I launched the petition, which now has over 3,500 signatories, people with concerns about contaminated land and water have been getting in touch with TAZ, rather like the postmistresses and masters who came forward when Mr Bates put out a call to them, during the Post Office Scandal. As a result of this, Kye has recently launched l ‘UK Landfill Campaigns’, a supportive network and resource for campaigners, through which people can connect, learn, and empower each other. Together we are stronger!
I’ve known Kye and Nicole for over 10 years now. I was living not far away from them at the time of the tragedy, and I also experienced that terrible flooding in 2014. I met them at a huge ‘post flood’ meeting held at the Spelthorne Leisure Centre, in Staines, and it was here that I first heard the shocking news of what had happened to Zane. I’ve come to know, love, respect and admire them both. They are amazing people, whose love for their beloved son blazes through them as strongly as does their grief and despair at his loss. They are fearless, brave, courageous campaigners, who will not rest until Zane has the justice he deserves, and until UK landfills and water supplies are made safe for people, for our environment, and for our beautiful planet.
Little Zane had helped to set up an ‘Eco Team’ at his school. And when he was asked about why sustainability is important, he carefully explained how much he and his family liked to look after their own garden… but that the world is one big garden and that we’re all responsible for looking after it together.
Rest in peace Zane, we heed your words.

It follows a meeting between the Lord Chancellor and the parents of Zane Gbangbola over their fight for an independent panel inquiry.Zane's parents dispute an inquest in 2016 which concluded the seven-year-old died from carbon monoxide poisoning from a petrol pump used to clear flood water, when the River Thames burst its banks in Surrey.
They say their son died from toxic hydrogen cyanide gas from a former tip near their Chertsey home and the petrol pump was not used.
They have accessed public health documents that stated firefighters found hydrogen cyanide in their home, but no carbon monoxide.
The latest development comes after a meeting on Wednesday between Zane’s parents, Kye Gbangbola and Nicole Lawler, Mr Chalk and Labour MP Richard Burgon, who is a long-term supporter of the family’s campaign.
The couple have repeatedly called for an independent inquiry but were previously told to apply for a fresh inquest.

On Thursday, a fourth council, Stroud District Council, external in Gloucestershire, voted in favour of Zane's Law - proposed legislation to provide greater transparency over contaminated land.
Three Sussex councils have already backed Zane's Law, Lewes, Brighton & Hove and Adur.
This week, the BBC revealed a landfill experiment took place near Zane's home in the 1960s, with continuing questions about what waste went into the ground.
'Heartfelt sympathies'Mr Burgon said: "Zane’s parents have been fighting for justice for over a decade. It should not drag on any longer.
"I call on the government to immediately grant the Independent Panel Inquiry. That’s the way we can ensure that justice is done."
A Ministry of Justice spokeswoman said: "This was a tragic incident and our heartfelt sympathies remain with the family of Zane Gbangbola.
"The Lord Chancellor will raise their call for an independent public inquiry with the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs."
The department also confirmed that the Lord Chancellor had committed to raising with the Prime Minister’s political advisers that the family would like to meet with the Prime Minister to discuss the case.
​Original Article>>

However, a coroner ruled that he died from carbon monoxide from a petrol-powered pump used to clear flood water.
Zane's father said he had previously called for tests on the land to ascertain what materials went in it.
The BBC saw details of the experiment in open files but was refused access to further papers by Spelthorne Council. 
In 2016, Surrey coroner Richard Travers concluded the boy died from carbon monoxide from the petrol-powered pump which was used at Zane's Chertsey home as large swathes of Surrey were flooded.
Zane's parents, Kye Gbangbola and Nicole Lawler, said the pump was not used. They have accessed public health documents that stated firefighters found hydrogen cyanide in their home, but no carbon monoxide.
And they also said they knew about the experiment but not what went into the land, which is why they previously wanted it to be tested.
Mr Gbangbola and Ms Lawler are meeting Justice Secretary Alex Chalk and Labour MP Richard Burgon over the case.
'LOST HISTORY'Mr Gbangbola said: "We've been aware [of the experimental lagoon] for some time, and there's a number of issues over the years where harm has been generated as a result of whatever is in that land. That's simply why we asked for the land to be tested all that time ago.
"Our only understanding is that it's listed from 1962 and the materials we don't know, so the only way to ascertain what is in that land is to test it."
Archives showed Middlesex County Council had aimed to pump out a flooded lagoon that was already being used as a tip, fill it with 30,000 tonnes of refuse and restore it to farmland. The experiment, on a floodplain, failed twice and was eventually abandoned.
Mr Gbangbola said the experiment was no longer common knowledge in the community, adding: "It may be a lost history, but it is totally known to the authorities."
However, health concerns have also been raised over similar experimental tipping, two miles away at Thorpe.

At Thorpe, in the 1950s, several councils and government departments were involved in a scheme where worked-out, flooded gravel pits were filled with household refuse, industrial material, power station ash and material from private hauliers. One pit, known as Pit C, could take waste from military organisations.
In 2002, former Runnymede MP Philip Hammond revealed problems with leachate (contaminated water from landfill) had continued for the next 40 years. He declined to comment to the BBC.
Anne Emerson's childhood home backed on to the Mead Lake Ditch, a stream that flowed into the Thorpe pits. Occasionally it flowed the opposite way, when residents would say "they are flushing out the gravel pits". She said it was something people accepted. She said at one time it was possible to row a boat along the stream and into the gravel pits at the end of the road.

Ms Emerson, now 60, has since moved to Ottershaw. She said she has suffered from autoimmune and thyroid issues for decades, but her thyroid condition has only recently been diagnosed.
She raised concerns because every winter the stream flooded their garden, where her family grew vegetables, and her fear now is the water was contaminated.
Ms Emerson, who studied plant science and genetics at Oxford University, said she learned about the Egham Experiment last autumn after speaking to Michele Haider, whose father died from a rare cancer after farming contaminated allotments in Chertsey.
Runnymede council, which covers Thorpe, said the only way to ascertain the status of the garden was for a resident to carry out private investigations on their land. 
Any council investigations would in the first instance look at the actual source of potential contamination, which would inform any need for more widespread investigations, they said.
A spokesman for Runnymede council said: "Whilst this would not be something that we could assist with currently, we would be happy to assist the resident with her own plans in an advisory capacity.
"The former Egham Experiment site is one of our many potentially-contaminated land sites which, when resources and funding allow, will be investigated in order of priority."

At Chertsey, details of the experimental lagoon were held in open records, but when the BBC submitted a freedom of information request to Spelthorne council for more details, reporters were notified of a non-disclosure undertaking following the Zane Gbangbola inquest and referred to the coroner.
Zane's parents also said they were unable to talk about inquest material for legal reasons. Ms Lawler said the couple initially refused to sign a confidentiality agreement but eventually did so "under duress". She said they felt "silenced".
A coroner's spokesman said: "With regards to any undertakings from Zane's family and from Spelthorne Council, our understanding is that any such undertakings would have been limited to dealing with copies of the audio recording of the inquest."

Chief coroner's guidance to coroners states that any recordings of inquests provided must be accompanied by a written notice advising that misuse may be Contempt of Court. The guidance includes a specimen "warning notice".
Following an approach to Mr Travers for more information on the landfill experiment, the BBC was advised to apply to the court for a recording of the inquest. The BBC is making a formal application.
However, the coroner's public report on Zane Gbangbola said Spelthorne had provided a history of the land since 1950 including licences and permissions for landfill use and said "inspections had revealed no significant polluting incidents".
Three Sussex authorities - Lewes District Council followed by Brighton and Hove City Council and Adur District Council - recently backed Zane's Law.
It followed a campaign by the family for legislation to provide greater transparency over contaminated land, named after their son.
Original article>>

​The Justice Secretary has agreed to discuss the case of Zane Gbangbola with an MP who is campaigning for an independent inquiry into the seven-year-old's death.
Zane died during floods in Surrey in 2014. An inquest in 2016 found carbon monoxide emitted by a petrol pump, which the boy's parents hired to clear flood water, poisoned him in his sleep.
But his parents contested the inquest verdict, and have argued the flood water was contaminated with toxic hydrogen cyanide from a nearby lake, located on a former landfill site, and claimed that was the ultimate cause for their son's death.
More than 30 MPs have signed an early day motion calling for an "independent panel inquiry with full powers to compel disclosure into the death".

Alex Chalk committed in the Commons on Tuesday to discuss the case with Labour MP Richard Burgon (Leeds East), who has been campaigning for an independent inquiry. 
Mr Burgon told the Commons that the boy's parents were watching proceedings from the public gallery. The MP said: "Zane was just seven when he died following floods 10 years ago this month. The fire brigade detected hydrogen cyanide multiple times."
The MP said Zane's parents have been "fighting for the truth about their son's death ever since". He said: "A duty of candour would have helped them to get it."
"But, in lieu of that, will the Government establish an independent panel inquiry with full disclosure so that all the evidence can be reviewed by experts, and so we can finally get the truth about what happened to an innocent seven-year-old boy and so that justice can be done?"
Mr Chalk said: "He raises a critically important case. Can I suggest that he and I speak to discuss it and see what further steps can properly be taken in this difficult case."
Labour shadow justice minister Kevin Brennan welcomed the commitment to discuss the case, but said the Government had not gone far enough on requiring public authorities to act "with candour and transparency" and accused the Government of "persisting with a piecemeal approach".
Mr Chalk defended the Government's record, including adopting the Hillsborough Charter, which he said requires public bodies to approach public scrutiny with candour. But he said: "Of course, we will keep this under review."
Mr Chalk had earlier told the Commons that the Government has imposed a duty of candour on the police, and is legislating to create a "strong, permanent, and independent public advocate to speak up for victims and their families".
 
By
Ben Hatton
https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/government-agree-discuss-death-surrey-28668623