A new Netflix drama is about to reveal the dogged determination of a group of parents convinced a council clean-up of a steelworks had harmed their children’s health.
Toxic Town, premiering on the streaming service on Thursday, tells the story of an environmental scandal which struck at the heart of an industrial town in England.
When a number of children were born within the space of a few years with limb differences, their parents became suspicious.
But it would take a decade-long legal battle before they could claim any kind of justice.
Toxic Town is set in the former steel town of Corby in Northhamptonshire.
The town grow from a small village to a large urban area during the 30s after the establishment of steel firm Stewarts & Lloyds.
This was eventually taken over by British Steel Corporation in 1967 and from the 70s onwards the plan was for steelworks to be centralised in South Wales, Sheffield, Scunthorpe, Teesside and Scotland.
By then, Corby was one of the largest steelmaking operations in Western Europe, covering 680 acres (2.8 million sq m), with four blast furnaces, two coke oven complexes and associated facilities.
In 1979, the government announced the closure of Corby Steelworks and by the end of 1981 more than 5,000 jobs had been lost from the plant.
Further cuts took the total loss to 11,000, leading to an unemployment rate of more than 30 per cent in the town.
Between 1984 and 1999, Corby Borough Council undertook the demolition, excavation and redevelopment of the site as part of a programme of urban regeneration for the area.
Over the course of 15 years from 1984 to 1999, buildings were demolished and the site reclaimed in parcels of land which involved the removal of waste, steel dust and slag to Deene Quarry.
This involved transporting the waste through populated areas to the quarry north of the site, with up to 200 vehicle movements a day.
The toxic waste was carried in open lorries, which often spilt sludge over the roads and released huge amounts of dust into the air.
At the same time during the 80s and 90s, the rates of babies born with limb differences in the Corby area was found to be almost three times higher than those of children born in the surrounding area.
A number of children were being born with differences affecting their hands and feet, including missing fingers and webbed fingers.
Parents of these children claimed the limb differences were not a coincidence within the town but caused by the clean-up of the old steelworks.
A group of families affected by the limb differences decided to take legal action and employed solicitor Des Collins to represent them.
The children were the claimants in the case, alleging the toxins released during Corby Borough Council’s reclamation work on contaminated land at the old steelworks interfered with their foetal development and caused limb differences.
They alleged their had mothers ingested or inhaled the toxic substances dispersed during the removal from the steelworks site to the quarry.
All of the children were conceived during the reclamation work. Twelve mothers lived within two miles of the contaminated area, four lived in neighbouring towns and two were based outside the county but regularly visited Corby during the first trimester of pregnancy.
They included:
Tracey Taylor gave birth to a little girl Shelby Anne in 1996, who died four days later.
Ms Taylor was not part of the legal case because her daughter’s condition was considered different from that of the other children. However, she was part of the original campaign and is played in Toxic Town by Aimee Lou Wood.
It took 10 years for the case to finally reach the High Court in 2009, by then 19 children were part of the legal action.
Prosecutor David Wilby QC told the court how the people of Corby people had been living in an “atmospheric soup of toxic materials”.
Louise Parker, Professor of Paediatrics and Community Health and Epidemiology at Dalhousie University, in Canada, testified between 1989 and 1998 children in Corby were 2.5 times more likely to be born with upper limb defects than in the rest of the Kettering Health Authority area, which was statistically “quite significant”.
And former council worker turned whistleblower Sam Hagen (played by Robert Carlyle) gave evidence that the toxic waste had not been handled safely by council contractors.
An internal report prepared by the council was uncovered which raised the prospect of residents being exposed to high levels of zinc, arsenic, boron and nickel as a result of the reclamation works.
A separate report, from the council’s auditor, said there was a “cavalier approach” to the clean-up operation.
The council denied it was negligent or that there was a link between the waste removal and children’s limb differences.
On 29 July, 2009, the Honorable Justice Akenhead returned a verdict that Corby Borough Council was “extensively negligent in its control and management of the sites which they acquired from British Steel”.
He added: “That negligence and, as from April 1, 1992, breach of statutory duty on the part of CBC permitted and led to the extensive dispersal of contaminated mud and dust over public areas of Corby and into and over private homes, with the result that the contaminants could realistically have caused the types of birth defects of which complaint has been made by the claimants.”
It cleared the way for the families to pursue individual claims against the council.
Although the council denied it was negligent or that there was a link between the waste removal and children’s limb differences.
The local authority’s chief executive at the time Chris Mallender said: “We have investigated every aspect of the claims, and provided detailed evidence to prove the clear-up of contaminated land was carried out safely and thoroughly.”
In the end, the council decided to pursue a legal appeal and mediate with the families at the same time.
And in April 2010 it announced it had dropped it appeal and had agreed a financial settlement with 19 families.
Mr Mallender said: “The council recognises that it made mistakes in its clean-up of the former British Steel site years ago and extends its deepest sympathy to the children and their families.
“Although I accept that money cannot properly compensate these young people for their disabilities and for all that they have suffered to date and their problems in the future, the council sincerely hopes that this apology coupled with today’s agreement will mean that they can now put their legal battle behind them and proceed with their lives with a greater degree of financial certainty.”
Details of the financial terms of settlement remained confidential.
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