‘It’s like living by a volcano’: The Londoners in the shadow of a burning waste mountain
Arnolds Field — probably the worst place to spend summer in London
Morning — for the past few years, something strange has been happening in one pocket of outer London. Every summer, instead of enjoying the sun and hot weather, residents of Rainham have to shut their windows and stay inside. They’re avoiding something many believe is wrecking their health: plumes of smoke from a mountain of illegally dumped waste that keeps self-igniting. The fires are now so common the London Fire Brigade sometimes has to rush to the site at least once a week. And yet, as the rest of the capital enjoys stricter air quality rules, in Rainham no solution appears in sight. The scandal of Arnolds Field is after your Sunday round-up below.
Plus: a major TfL lawsuit, a controversial development on the South Bank, and the new Michelin stars handed out across London.
Enjoying the Spy? Help us create a quality news magazine for Londoners by pledging a subscription to the Spy. You won’t pay anything yet, but you’ll automatically become a paid member when we launch. Like a crowdfunding campaign, in slow-motion. Digestible round-ups, detailed features and hard-hitting investigations — all for less than a pint each month.
What we’ve spied
⚖️ A woman who lost an arm and leg when she was hit by two Tube trains is taking TfL to court. While travelling home from work in September 2022, Sarah de Lagarde slipped and fell through the gap between a train and the platform edge at High Barnet station, laying there for several minutes before the train departed and ran her over. She was still down there 11 minutes later when a second train pulled into the platform — though she escaped with her life, she suffered severe injuries, and her right arm and right leg had to be amputated. Key to her legal claim now, which was lodged in the High Court on Thursday, is that a series of safety failings by TfL meant she was on the tracks undetected by staff for 15 minutes, despite her screams for help. Her claim questions whether these procedures are still fit for purpose. TfL had conducted its own investigation into de Lagarde’s incident, but came to the conclusion it was a series of “unfortunate and unique events” and a freak accident. De Lagarde said on Thursday: “I believe TfL is putting millions of people at risk every day. It is vital that it learns lessons from my case to make a safer network for everyone and stop incidents like this happening again”. Worth reading: the FT published an in-depth account of de Lagarde’s accident and the aftermath in October last year, though it contains depictions of serious bodily injury.
🏳️🌈 More than half of London’s LGBTQ+ venues have shut over the past two decades, new data shows. The capital had 125 back in 2002, but just 50 by 2022, according to figures put out this week by the Greater London Authority. The consensus among LGBTQ+ venue operators who spoke to the BBC is that it’s a perfect “firestorm” of reasons — rising rents, insecure leases, staff shortages, the recent cost-of-living crisis, the higher cost of goods due to Brexit.
🏢 It looks like ‘the Slab’ is coming to the South Bank, after housing secretary Michael Gove approved the £400m office development, despite pleas from campaigners. Known officially as the 72 Upper Ground scheme and drawn up by the Mitsibushi Estate, the Slab will include a 26-storey tower built on the site of ITV’s former headquarters — but demolition of the channel’s old building was paused by Gove in 2022 as he considered whether to call in the application in the face of opposition. Some campaigners had pointed to the environmental impact, claiming more carbon emissions will be produced by its construction than if its 4,000 office workers commuted from Surrey by car. Others were motivated by architecture, like the Twentieth Century Society, which campaigns for the protection of modernist buildings like the nearby National Theatre and claims the Slab will cause “cause irreversible damage to the unique setting, heritage and dynamism of London’s South Bank”. But both Lambeth council and the London mayor had already backed the scheme, and now Gove’s decision on Tuesday seals the deal. It’s not the only controversial office block on the way to the South Bank — in November last year, art groups at Old Paradise Yard were evicted to make way for another development, this time the size of 27 football pitches.
🚇 Lots of concrete details on the proposed DLR extension over the Thames in south east London, now that TfL has launched its consultation. The proposals would see a new station built at Beckton Riverside, on the northern bank, then a tunnel built to get the line all the way to Thamesmead, which currently has no rail station and is solely dependent on buses. The rough timeline is construction beginning in 2028 and an opening in the early 2030s — the only catch is that TfL still needs to secure funding for the project, and City Hall was miffed to see no cash for the project in Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s most recent Autumn Statement. Some more London transport housekeeping: Hammersmith Bridge is opening a temporary cycle lane, Colindale Tube station is closing for six months later this year, and TfL’s boss has warned the delays seen on the Central line recently may soon spread to other lines.
⭐ 15 London restaurants got new Michelin stars at the 2024 food guide’s unveiling on Monday — and four have had theirs deleted. The most widely-covered winner was Adejoké Bakare, founder and head chef of Chishuru in Fitzrovia, who's become the UK’s first black female chef with a Michelin star thanks to her modern take on west African cuisine. Other winners were Akoko, also serving west African cuisine in Fitzrovia; Humble Chicken, Mountain and Aulis in Soho; Pavyllon London, Sushi Kanesaka, Ormer, Humo and Gymkhana in Mayfair; Dorian and The Ledbury in Notting Hill; Brooklands at The Peninsula in Hyde Park; Trivet in Southwark; and 1890 by Gordon Ramsay at the Savoy Hotel in the Strand. Losing their stars were Barrafina in Soho, Leroy in Shoreditch, Hakkasan Hanway Place in Bloomsbury and Hakkasan Mayfair.
👮 A proper battering for Met Police chiefs this week, as it’s become clear they’re facing serious mutinies on two different fronts. The first is among London’s firearms officers, who had handed in their badges in protest in September last year when their colleague was charged with the murder of Chris Kaba, a 24-year-old man who was fatally shot in a case of mistaken identity. Now the Times has acquired headcount figures that show the Met lost 250 firearms officers between April and December 2023 — equivalent to one in ten, and a massive jump on the loss of just 22 in the year to March 2023. On top of the Kaba case, firearms officers are reportedly fed up with longstanding issues around poor pastoral care and lengthy disciplinary procedures that have put morale at rock bottom. The second mutiny comes from the organisation that represents Black police officers, which has called on anyone of ethnic minority background to boycott joining the Met over a “racist’ misconduct investigation into its chairperson. The National Black Police Association claims its chair Charles Ehikiyia, who’s facing potential dismissal over allegations he sent offensive WhatsApp messages, is being targeted for voicing concerns about the racism he and his colleagues have endured. The boycott — the first in 20 years — is bad timing for the Met, which is currently on a recruitment drive for minority ethnic officers after being judged ‘institutionally racist’ in a recent public review into the force. Not helping matters was news on Tuesday that several Met officers are now under investigation after a 16-year-old boy, who is black, was stopped and searched six times in five months around the Tottenham and Stratford areas.
🛝 A botched redevelopment of estates in south London has left children unable to play outside, families say. Last August Southwark council began tearing down parts of the Bell Gardens and Lindley estates in Peckham, ripping out playgrounds and communal spaces to make way for new homes. But then the council ran out of cash and abandoned the plans — leaving local families unable to access the now boarded-up spaces. The families have been speaking to the Guardian this week, with one telling the paper: “I understand the need for housing, I’m overcrowded myself. But don’t take all our green space, our play space. There isn’t enough as it is in this area”.
🔍 And finally, we leave you with:
Mid reviews for the new Scrosese-style crime thriller set in London, Gassed Up
A converted chapel near Harrods on sale for £14.5m
babe what’s wrong you’ve hardly touched your £6 London bonus
The story of London’s ‘gouged’, ice-cream scoop-like building
POV you’re walking home from Tooting Broadway at 4am
Dread that London’s urban foxes are now in their noisy mating season
‘I fear one day, 20 years down the line, we’re going to hear about residents dropping dead’
For most Londoners, it’s cars that are the focus of air quality concerns. In one corner of outer London, it’s a 60ft mound of rubbish that keeps catching fire.
Residents of Rainham, in the east London borough of Havering, have started dreading summer. At a time when hot weather brings out sunbathers and BBQs across the rest of the capital, in Rainham it keeps windows tightly shut. “Have you ever watched Stranger Things?” one resident, Sonya, asks the Spy. “I tell my friends Rainham is like Hawkins” — a reference to the sleepy suburban town in the TV show that becomes gripped by paranormal activity. “I’ve never known a place to have so many things to go wrong. It’s so creepy.”
The malignant presence Sonya and others are trying to ward off is the regular plumes of smoke wafting out of Arnolds Field, Launders Lane — a patch of land with 40,000 cubic metres of waste piled two-storeys high. Much of it was dumped illegally. Some is construction waste, and some of it contains asbestos — but the truth is no one knows what’s truly in there, because no one’s ever dug it all up.
And for the past few years, when it gets hot in London, Arnolds Field has begun to spontaneously combust. “My boy, a firefighter at Dagenham, says it’s like a volcano,” says Alan, another Rainham resident. “He’s down there all the time — every other day in the summer — pumping water into the pit”. Neighbours say they feel “trapped” during the eruptions, as “black smoke” descends on Rainham. “You can’t have your windows open in the middle of August,” says Liz. “Even when the windows are shut, you still wake up with this acrid feeling in your throat. It’s like rubber and plastic all in one go. You can’t hang the washing out, you can’t sit in the garden. You’re just trapped inside”.
Data the Spy has obtained from the London Fire Brigade via a Freedom of Information request shows just how combustible Arnolds Field has become. The brigade has dealt with more than 130 separate fires at the site since 2019 — an average of one every fortnight, but that frequency is far higher in summer. 2022, a year of record-breaking temperatures in London, was the worst on record, with 61 fires — one every six days. While last summer was milder, bringing 23 fires, residents are now waiting to see what temperatures 2024 might bring. “It’s mad it’s become normal round here,” says Alan. “You see a big cloud of black smoke and you think, here we go, Launders Lane has gone up again”.
Frustration with the situation is now so high that, on the doorstep in Rainham, the Spy heard rumours some residents are mulling a council tax boycott out of protest. Others find the lack of action particularly egregious in light of last year’s expansion of the ultra-low emissions zone expansion (ULEZ) — “no car in Havering is as bad as that smoke”. But responsibility for the mess at Arnolds Field is muddy. A task force led by Havering Council that brings together academics and other public bodies across London is officially on the case, and is monitoring air quality around the site. But a plan to properly sort it all out is at a stalemate. The council argues the current landowner, DMC Essex, needs to take responsibility. DMC Essex argues the council needs to permit it to build on the land to make cleaning up the mess worthwhile. Ballpark figures for a major clean-up operation are in the millions. Adding to the regulatory headache, Arnolds Field, for all its rubbish, is classified as green belt land.
All the while residents worry about the impact of the fires on their health. Sonya is asthmatic, and so is her youngest daughter. “I just feel like long term — and I don’t want to be dramatic — but because my chest is so bad, when I die I just know it’s going to be because of my lungs. And we don’t know what we’re breathing in”. A few doors down lives Gemma and her disabled son: “[During the 2022 fires] we all ended up with a sore throat and a cough, because we’d left the windows open and we’d been breathing it all in while we’d been sleeping”. Some locals have set up a Facebook group, Launders Lane ‘CRISIS’, where its 1,900 members share suspected symptoms from the fires — from nosebleeds to even claims of linked cancer cases in the community.
The big unknown is exactly how contaminated Arnolds Field is. Once a quarry and legal landfill until the 1960s, there was a moment, in 1999, when the site got planning permission to be restored as a community woodland. That never happened — instead, over the next 20 years, it became an illegal dumping ground. The timeline is sketchy — waste would be dumped in the small hours and at weekends, when the authorities weren’t looking — but 2012 to 2016 is believed to have been the most prolific period. There’s even been suspicions that waste material from the construction of the Olympic site in Stratford ended up at Arnolds Field, though the Spy’s been unable to find official confirmation. What’s known for sure is that, in the late 2010s, the Environment Agency (EA) led a prosecution against a trio of fly-tippers who’d been operating across east London and the Home Counties and had dumped hundreds of tonnes of waste. The gang was caught in the act at Arnolds Field in 2014 by EA officers, who had spotted them using a lorry to move concrete blocks meant to prevent access to the site. Two were later jailed, and the third was given a suspended sentence and a night curfew. In the years since, a new owner has taken over Arnolds Field, a company called DMC Essex, and the site has in theory been secured. And the community has been left with a mountain of mostly unknown materials.
Then the fires began. There was one fire incident recorded by the London Fire Brigade in 2018, then 10 in 2019, then 16 in 2020, then 20 in 2021. The best explanation the Spy’s heard is that the mound on Arnolds Field acts a bit like a compost heap — its core heating up to such an extent that it self-ignites. It’s only since the spike of 61 in fires in 2022 though that serious scientific answers to the impact have started to materialise. A series of air quality monitors are now in place around Arnolds Field — one at the nearby school, another near the golf course, others dotted around the suburbs — and the data is being analysed by researchers at Imperial College London. They’re looking at levels of fine particulates that get in the lungs, like PM2.5, and harmful gases like nitrogen dioxide (NO2). “Fires cause very large but short lived peaks in particulates and NO2,” is the current view based on interim air quality data presented by Havering Council at a public meeting in November 2023. The slides continue: “Likely to have immediate effect in terms of respiratory symptoms and residents would be advised to minimise time outside during fires[,] particularly people with existing health problems”. The slides also include data from one of the monitors, near the golf course, showing hourly PM2.5 levels spiking far above the UK’s legal limit during August and September last year. But the council says that when air quality is examined across the whole of the year, the average is below this limit.
There’s still more to learn about the exact health consequences though. Havering Council has now been handed data from GPs in the area by NHS North East London, after some delays due to privacy laws, with a view to finding out what exactly local doctors are seeing in Rainham residents. The council didn’t give the Spy a timeline for when its health assessment will be published, but said in a statement: “We have commissioned air quality monitoring and are working with Imperial College London using local NHS data to explore possible impacts on health from the significant but short lived increases in levels of particulates caused by fires on the site”. And a recent soil analysis commissioned by the council and published in November has given some insight into what the 20 years of dumping have done — asbestos and a range of toxic chemicals, from arsenic to lead, have been found at the site.
A bigger picture solution is still to come, with the council and landowner at loggerheads. Last year DMC Essex said its plan to clean up Arnolds Field was being blocked, with representatives of the company offering to remove “dangerous wastes” at the site and cover it with a “restoration layer of soil”. In exchange, it wanted planning permission to use up to a quarter of the site for storing industrial machinery. Havering Council had apparently turned it down — "everything we ask for is just getting batted back,” an agent from DMC Essex told a meeting of locals in May. Havering Council made its position clear to residents at a later meeting in November: removing or managing the material on site does not need planning permission, and the owners can take steps to make Arnolds Field safe without a comprehensive redevelopment.
But patience among Rainham residents is running out. “They’ve said it’s very complicated — but it always is, and at the end of the day it’s the local people who cop it,” says Alan. Some think they’ll have to move away. “We won’t be staying in Rainham much longer — we’ve had so many summers ruined,” says Shaun. And others fear the consequences of the Arnolds Field fires may only become clear in the long-term “I just fear it’s going to be one of those situations where, in 20 years down the line, we’re going to be hearing about residents are dropping dead, because we’ve realised what they were breathing in was toxic,” says Sonya.
When approached for comment by the Spy, Havering Council said:
Havering Council is liaising with the landowner and other parties to explore and understand what is present on the site and the impact this has locally. The Council is exploring all possible solutions, including enforcement action, but as the land is privately-owned it is the responsibility of the land-owner to ultimately resolve this and prevent any issue that may arise from the site.
We have been working with the landowner and an external company to carry out soil sampling tests to understand the nature of any contamination, and have received a list of recommended actions the landowners should undertake to make sure the site is safe.
We have also been working with Imperial College London to analyse air quality data for the area, which has shown that, over the last 12 months PM2.5 and NO2 levels across Rainham have stayed below the UK annual air quality limits, and are comparable with other areas of Havering and adjacent boroughs.
The London Fire Brigade told us:
The fires at Launders Lane are distressing for the local community and can put firefighters at unnecessary risk. The reason the fires are happening regularly is due to the build-up of heat from rubbish dumped at the site over a long period of time.
Local communities deserve a long-term solution to the problem and we are part of a working group, alongside the council and the Environment Agency, that seeks to resolve this long-running issue.
We will continue to send crews to assess any reports of fire and will respond appropriately.
The Spy attempted to contact the owners of Arnolds Field, DMC Essex, but we did not hear back by the time of publication.
This organised and flagrant flytipping is so out to control in London, but I have never heard of anything so bad as in Arnold’s Fields. I dread to think of the long term health effects.