Danescroft Virginia Water LLP instructed Discovery CE Limited to carry out a Ground Investigation at a site known as Virginia Water. The overall objective of this investigation were to recover geotechnical and geo-environmental data to allow assessment of the underlying ground conditions at the site with respect to geotechnical and contaminated land issues relevant to the proposed development. At the time of writing this article, all investigation works have been completed, only gas and groundwater monitoring visits remain.
The lush but derelict site is located in Trumps Green, Surrey, just around 100m north of the M3, occupying a land of approximately 4.8 hectares. The site was largely overgrown with shrubs, grass and trees, a number of old timber sheds as well as brick and concrete foundations pads dotted around site. It was understood that the site is to be developed to include residential hosing which is likely to consist of semi-detached, detached and short terraced housing with gardens with public open space. BGS indicate the site is underlain by the Windlesham Formation in the northern half of site with the southern half of the site underlain by Bagshot Formation.
Fieldwork revealed that made ground was encountered within five of forty exploratory locations as loose dark brown fine sand. Then chemical testing of soil samples found that areas of the site containing made ground may be considered to be contaminated from a human health perspective, the rest of the site has been assessed as having a very low contamination rating.
As a result delineation of the made ground and the distribution of elevated contaminant concentrations within these areas was recommended to be undertaken. DCE also recommended that a remediation strategy is prepared and submitted to the local authority for approval dealing with the identified contamination, unforeseen contamination and gas protection measures if required.
As mentioned before, further monitoring and assessment is ongoing and ground gas risks will be reassessed as new data becomes available. DCE and Danescroft were pleased with the results of the scope of works carried out in Virginia Water. We look forward to working with Danescroft again.