Irrespective of whether the development is commercial or residential it is possible to reduce the clean up costs by as much as 15% as illustrated by the following example.

Company A acquires contaminated land as trading stock and incurs £100,000 of qualifying land remediation expenditure in the accounting period. It treats the expenditure as a revenue deduction in its profit and loss account and can claim a further deduction of £50,000 in its Case 1 tax computation, giving it a total enhanced deduction of £150,000 against profits in the accounting year of sale. At a corporate tax rate of 30% this is equivalent to 15% of cost.

The developer must have an interest in land and will not be able to claim the relief if the remediation works are being undertaken for the owner of the site rather than on the developers own account.