"VERY Concerned Parents" (Letters, March 17) wrote about the potential hazard to pupils resulting from the siting of the new Radcliffe Riverside High School on the former East Lancs Paper Mill site, adjacent to the Tower Farm landfill site.

Their concern was over the nature of the material that has been tipped there over the years.

As part of the proposal to build the new school, the council wishes to develop part of the Tower Farm site as school playing fields. There is a long history of tipping on this landfill site, by a variety of operators and involving a range of materials.

The council recognises that the tipping activities will have resulted in a degree of sub-surface contamination and, in common with other landfill sites where non-inert waste has been tipped, the production of methane. Properly treated, the existence of these materials does not prevent such sites from being developed for future uses.

It is important that the council understands the nature of the potential contamination, and what measures have been taken by operators to deal with it, and to then determine what further measures might need to be undertaken. Such measures will also consider the impact of potential contamination on the adjacent East Lancs Paper Mill site where the school is to be constructed.

The council has recently commissioned a full risk assessment of the Tower Farm landfill site to inform decisions about how the school playing fields might be developed, and what further measures might need to be taken. "Very Concerned Parents" can be assured that the health, safety and welfare of children, staff and other users of facilities will be paramount when the school is opened in 2007.

PAUL COOKE,

head of schools' planning and management service.