I don't think anyone has undertaken any surveys but my guess is that the terraces at Belle Vue will, like most things in Yorkshire, have had colliery spoil used as fill beneath. Colliery spoil/shale naturally contains heavy metals including nic. It's perfectly safe and will cause no problems but if you want to build housing on it it will have to be removed and the cost of disposal to licensed landfill will be very expensive.

The fill may also be ash which contains the same contaminants.

Wouldn't the same expense also apply to a new ground being built on the same plot? Or is it the residential aspect?

Different parameters are used to measure contamination within garden areas. Whilst it's under the terracing or hardstanding it's not a problem, notwithstanding handling the stuff, but it can be permanently buried under structures (and that also includes roads and houses). It can be buried under garden if there is sufficient clean cover placed as mitigation. It's no big thing to overcome, just makes the land less valuable.

I wouldn't have thought it would be much of a problem for a retail development.

It isn't really. Expensive to handle but it can be overcome. If 88m don't like the costs involved in sorting then who knows they could look to sell.

Khlav had answerd but yes, different threshold for residential. However if you wanted to remove the Northern terrace to build a new stand with concessions, toilets etc beneath then it would nave to be removed at considerable expense but if you just laid concrete on top of the fill you would probably be okay.

aww, c'mon......88m are gonna play down the value of the plot any way they can, its in their interests to say its contaminated and hardly worth what they paid for it, (not that anybody even knows) keeping everyone in the dark as to their intentions, its all mind games.
Make no mistake, 88m weren't doing anybody any favours by buying it, its bought to develop and make lots of money.....for 88m.....The End.
I don't know the wheels and deals surrounding the sale, or the newmarket thing, who colluded with who and why, the suggestions of hidden agendas and conflict of interests, I dunno any of that, but it all stinks to hell and back and there doesn't seem to be much recourse without some solid facts.
There may be some solid facts, and I trust those who have them are playing their cards with Wakey's best interests in mind, that means not blathering it all over the internet until its prudent to do so.

88m are not saying its contaminated, they took a punt and bought the site unseen and without surveys as far as I understand.

We know what they paid for it.

Why is it in their interest to say its contaminated (they have not). If they sell it on any sensible purchaser would undertake due diligence and full site investigations to establish its actual value.

what did they pay for it ?

Not sure Manni Hussain would be happy if we revealed on here what he paid.

However when he registers the title it often mentions the purchase price so if you go nosying on the Land Registry web site you may find it there at some time.

I seem to remember when it went up for sale on the sale agents website it was offers of the region of above £600,000. What exactly was paid I don't know, it could have been more or. maybe been less. Maybe now the sale has gone through the actual figure is on land registry records which I think members of the public can access.

To buy it without a ground investigation report is risky business so it must have been a price he could afford to lose.