Zane’s Law is a proposed new Law (The Clean Land (Human Rights) Bill) to require public authorities to promote clean air and land. It would also require councils and the Environment Agency to keep registers of contaminated land.
The common name for the proposed Law, comes from the name of a seven-year-old boy, Zane Gbangbola, who was killed by poison gas emerging from a landfill site in Chertsey in Surrey.
It is particularly relevant to North Northamptonshire, because Kings Cliffe is the site of a major toxic waste dump. Toxic waste is brought to North Northamptonshire from all over the country.
The Kings Cliffe site even handles low-level nuclear waste. East Northamptonshire Council and Northamptonshire County Council both opposed giving planning consent for the dumping of such waste in the County, but the central government overruled both Councils.
In other parts of the world, it is unthinkable that radioactive waste could be dumped into clay pits, It is assumed that such waste would always be stored in rock formations, ideally ones that are far from geologically active areas (i.e. far from earthquake zones or volcanoes.)
There are a number of sites in the Nene Herald area where unexpected contamination has been found during development projects. Sometimes, the contamination is only discovered when a test borehole is drilled.
On one occasion, the contamination was so recent that the drill brought up fragments of a newspaper = and it was still readable.
Further North, there are multiple sites (some lost) where toxic waste from the Corby steelworks has been buried. The Courts have ruled that this waste has caused birth defects.
There has even been a TV drama miniseries, “Toxic Town” about the Corby toxic waste case. The four-part series was released worldwide on Netflix on the 27th of February 2025. It starred Jodie Whittaker, Aimee Lou Wood, Robert Carlyle, Rory Kinnear, Toby Eden, and Brendan Coyle.
Given this history, it was expected that most Councils would support the campaign for Zane’s Lane, especially those in North Northamptonshire. Surprisingly, this has not proven to be the case.
On Thursday 5th March 2026, Reform-controlled North Northants Council declined to support the campaign for “Zane’s Law”,