DECONTAMINATING a mobile home park at Eynesbury, which is permanent home to 50 households, is likely to cost about £500,000, Huntingdonshire District Council s cabinet will be told tomorrow (Thursday). Soil under 46 of the homes is contaminated by a chemi

DECONTAMINATING a mobile home park at Eynesbury, which is permanent home to 50 households, is likely to cost about £500,000, Huntingdonshire District Council's cabinet will be told tomorrow (Thursday).

Soil under 46 of the homes is contaminated by a chemical that could possibly cause cancer if someone were exposed to it over a whole lifetime. HDC stresses that there is no short term risk, but it is required by law to remove the affected soil and replace it with uncontaminated material.

Families will be moved out in turn while two feet of soil is dug out and removed.

This means the council is having to buy five mobile homes at £80,000 each to house the families for the approximately two weeks it will take for the work to be done on each pitch. No decision has yet been taken on where they will be sited, but at least some are likely to be on the site itself to minimise disruption for residents.

With conveyancing and other costs, including the work itself, which is currently out to tender, the total bill is expected to exceed £500,000. But, when the mobile homes have been re-sold and the Government has paid for nearly all the other work, including the scientific investigation and excavation, the burden on Council Tax payers is expected to be small - though they will have to pay a horticulturist to re-plant people's gardens.

The site, off Howitts Lane, was built on 17th-19th century clay pits that were found during a routine check to have been filled in with pulverised fuel ash from commercial furnaces during or after World War II.

When test borings last year found concentrations of benzo(alpha)pyrene at 10 times the national background level of one part per million,