4. Contamination of vacant and derelict land

4.1 The position on contamination was unknown for forty seven per cent of the vacant and derelict land in the survey. For derelict land, 491 sites (3,280 hectares) were either suspected or known to be contaminated.

4.2 For contaminated derelict land, where the type of contamination was known, coal was in the most common contaminant and was present on 58 per cent of contaminated land where the contaminant was known (632 hectares). This can be seen in Table 8.

4.3 Table 9 shows land known to be contaminated, categorised by Local Enterprise Company. Of the 1491 hectares of contaminated derelict land, 421 hectares (28%) is in the Fife Enterprise area. Enterprise Ayrshire with 225 hectares (15%) and Lanarkshire Development Agency with 204 hectares (14%) have the second and third largest proportions of the national total respectively.