• the relief is only available to companies (not individuals); the land must have been acquired by the company for the purpose of its trade or property-letting business. At the time of acquisition it must have been contaminated;
• land is ‘ contaminated ’ if substances are causing harm , or there is the possibility of them causing harm. Note that this is a wide definition and can plausibly apply to surprising situations (eg expenditure on containing flood water);
• if the company’s expenditure is capital in nature (which it will often be) then it not only gets higher tax relief, but it gets it much sooner. This is because the relief is available in the year of expenditure rather than being added to the CGT base cost of the property (which is only of any use when the property is sold);
• beware of accepting grants or contributions to works, since these can reduce the availability of the relief; and
• care needs to be taken if the company is undertaking the remediation work itself (you cannot claim for any cost of employees who have spent less than 20% of their time on the project in any accounting period).

Land remediation relief is often overlooked. One obvious point to appreciate is that if the seller could be regarded as the polluter, then the seller should sell to a buyer before the remediation is carried out (otherwise there will be no tax relief).© Practical Lawyer