PERSIMMON PLC

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GREENBELT - Digging up Greenfield sites for quick profits from windfall planning consents is ruining the heritage of the nation. Once it is gone, it is gone. Britain is short of genuinely affordable housing that developers are loath to provide where all they want it the money. It may be that Clarion Housing and Thakeham intend building affordable units on this site. They should also bear in mind the requirement for sustainable development in United Nations terms. Copyright photograph © April 26 2018, Herstmonceux Museum Limited. All rights reserved. You may not copy this picture except for educational use.

Persimmon plc is a British housebuilding company, headquartered in York, England. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.

HISTORY

Persimmon was founded by Duncan Davidson in 1972. The company is named after a horse which won the 1896 Derby and St. Leger for the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII). After leaving George Wimpey, Davidson had formed Ryedale Homes in 1965, selling it to Comben Homes in 1972 for £600,000. Davidson restarted development again in the Yorkshire area; Persimmon began to expand regionally with the formation of an Anglian division in 1976 followed by operations in the Midlands and the south-west. In 1984, Persimmon acquired Tony Fawcett’s company Sketchmead; Fawcett had been a director of Ryedale and he became deputy managing director at Persimmon. The enlarged company was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1985, by which time the Company was building around 1,000 houses per year.

Steady regional expansion proceeded throughout the late 1980s, taking volumes up to 2,000 homes per year by 1988. By the start of the 1990s, the company was regarded as one of the safest housebuilders from a stockholder's perspective. During April 1990, the managing director of Persimmon, Norman Lilley, was killed after his aircraft exploded mid-flight. One year later, the company conducted a rights issue to raise £33 million for land purchases. It was negatively impacted by the early 1990s recession, although sales figures showed signs of recovery as early as March 1992.

During February 1993, John White was appointed chief executive of Persimmon in place of Davidson, who continued to hold the position of executive chairman. By thus point, the firm was selling roughly 2,300 houses per year, and recording an annual profit of £10.16 million, which was considerably down from the peak figure achieved for 1989–1990 of £32 million. In March 1994, shortly after Persimmon's announcement that it had almost doubled its pre-tax profits year-on-year to £18.6 million, it raised £49 million from shareholders to expand its land bank by a third in preparation for future development. The positive results achieved around this time were attributed to favourable market conditions, including falling costs and a gentle rate of inflation on house prices; Persimmon was able to cut selling costs down to £3,700 per unit in early 1994

During late 1995, Persimmon made the first of a series of major acquisitions. Ideal Homes, once the largest housebuilder in the country and then part of Trafalgar House was bought for £176 million, giving the Group a much stronger presence in the south-east. Amid the acquisition of Ideal Homes, Davidson issued a public denial that family influence had played a role in the purchase. Following the acquisition, Persimmon was able to increase its margins and recorded a pre-tax profit of £33.1 million for 1996. Around this time, the firm's construction strategy was centred on the principle of 'quality over quantity'.

During April 1998, it completed the purchase of the Scottish housing business of John Laing Group in exchange for £18 million, increasing its Scottish landbank by roughly one-third to almost 3,000 plots. Another acquisition was of the Scottish housebuilding business Tilbury Douglas Homes. In 1999, the firm launched a new subsidiary focused on interurban development. Throughout the late 1990s, Persimmon recorded a series of increases to its profits.

In early 2001, Persimmon acquired Beazer Homes UK in exchange for £612 million, which brought the company's annual output to over 12,000 homes per year. The deal came about after Beazer and Bryant announced a 'merger of equals' that was to create a new house builder called Domus. However, Taylor Woodrow stepped in with a £556 million bid for Bryant while Persimmon bought Beazer. The acquisition of Beazer brought with it the upmarket housing business Charles Church; months after the purchase, Persimmon incurred considerable losses as well as legal action that related to Church.

In January 2006, Persimmon completed the acquisition of Westbury, another listed UK house builder, for a total consideration of £643 million. Around the same timeframe, it also purchased the regional house builder Senator Homes in exchange for £25 million. As a result of its acquisitions, the firm became the largest housebuilder in the UK.

The company was heavily impacted by the onset of the Great Recession; in 2008 alone, it lost £780 million along with impairments totalling £905 million. However, it returned to profitability in early 2009.[38] In early 2013, Persimmon recorded a near-doubling of profits and total revenues of £1.72 billion; some of these gains were attributed to the British government's Help to Buy scheme.

During 2019, the firm completed 15,855 homes and recorded an annual profit of £1.09 billion, which was the largest ever achieved by a British housebuilder; however, sales were declining amid recent reputational damage to Persimmon much of which was due to alleged quality control issues.

In May 2024, Persimmon was reported to be considering a bid for Legal & General's subsidiary Cala Homes, which was valued at around £1 billion.

In the years following the Grenfell Tower fire, Persimmon, along with other housebuilders, made financial provisions to remediate fire safety problems on properties it had previously constructed. In 2024, it spent £60 million on building safety remediation; a January 2025 trading update revealed the firm had spent £120 million on building safety works, with further work required on 30% of known developments. It completed 10,664 homes in 2024, up from 9,922 completions in 2023.

CRITICISM

BUILD QUALITY

Persimmon has regularly been criticised for the poor build quality of some of its homes.

In 2008, a boy was killed by a falling mantelpiece. Persimmon, which sub-contracted company KD Childs to fit the fireplaces, had not checked the standards and had never received documents about how fireplaces were fitted. A mantelpiece had previously fallen at another Persimmon Home but was treated as a "one-off" incident.

Persimmon's build quality was the subject of a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary broadcast on 15 July 2019. In August 2019, Persimmon appointed an independent team of construction quality inspectors to ensure its homes are built to required standards.

In April 2019, Persimmon launched an independent review of customer care and quality of work following criticism. Persimmon had been ranked the lowest major housebuilder in the Home Builders Federation annual customer satisfaction survey. The review, published in December 2019, criticised Persimmon for not having minimum construction standards, increasing the risk of build defects, with a "systemic nationwide failure" of missing and/or incorrectly installed fire cavity barriers in its timber frame properties. In March 2021, Persimmon CEO Dean Finch announced plans to double the firm's team of independent quality inspectors to over 60 by the end of 2021.

In 2021, Persimmon built a block of properties the wrong way round in Colchester. The local authority required them to ensure the building was completed to the original designs submitted.

CENSORSHIP

In 2019, Persimmon paid to take control of and then shut down a Facebook group, called Persimmon Homes Unhappy Customers, which detailed complaints about the company, and had almost 14,000 members. The company defended deleting the group.

HEALTH AND SAFETY FAILURE

In 2001, Persimmon was fined £125,000 after an employee was crushed to death. HSE investigating inspector Tony Mitchell said: "Companies need to ensure that all safety devices are fully operational. In this case properly fitted interlocks would have prevented access to the enclosure, and saved a life".

EXECUTIVE PAY

In December 2017, Persimmon's chairman, Nicholas Wrigley, resigned over his role in awarding Jeff Fairburn, the CEO, a £128 million bonus. The Persimmon bonus scheme was believed to be the UK's "most generous ever", scheduled to pay more than £800 million to 150 senior staff from 31 December 2016.

In October 2018, Fairburn received widespread criticism after refusing to discuss the bonus awarded to him the previous year. When the bonus was awarded he said he would forgo half his shares: the final bonus which therefore was awarded £75 million. 

This was the largest bonus award by a listed UK company in history. Fairburn has said he would give a "substantial proportion" of the bonus to charity; however no details of the charities were given (and no charitable involvement could be identified three years later). He left the following month in a decision that the company described as being by "mutual agreement and at the request of the company".

LATE PAYMENT

In April 2019, Persimmon Homes was suspended from the UK Government's Prompt Payment Code for failing to pay suppliers on time. It was reinstated around 10 months later.

COMPETITION

In February 2024, Persimmon was among eight UK house-builders targeted by the Competition and Markets Authority in an investigation into suspected breaches of competition law. The CMA said it had evidence that firms shared commercially sensitive information with competitors, influencing the build-out of sites and the prices of new homes. In January 2025, the CMA said it was conducting further investigations into the suspected anti-competitive conduct. In June 2025, the CMA investigation was extended to August 2025. 

In July 2025, the housebuilders offered to pay £100 million towards affordable housing programme as part of an agreement to reform practices on information sharing and to end the investigation without admitting any liability or wrongdoing. On 30 October 2025, the CMA confirmed its investigation had been dropped in return for a £100 million payment towards affordable homes and other measures including the development of industry-wide guidance on information sharing and agreements not to share certain types of information with other housebuilders.

Unregistered Entities - 

WD/2015/0090/ HERSTMONCEUX VILLAGE CONDITIONS A - Z INDEX

WATER CONTAMINATION - If houses are built on the hill that supplies the last surviving well in Herstmonceux, all of those who presently enjoy a sustainable water supply are likely to be poisoned by pesticides from the gardens of the proposed housing. In addition, where the hard standings of a proposal for 70 houses are to be gully drained to a point lower than the twin wells, soakage that supplies the wells will be diverted away potentially starving the wells of water and increasing pesticide accumulations from the proposed garden areas. The amusing cartoon above portrays the situation that perhaps the developers were not aware of, when they bought into a situation that they should have been able to rely on - if there had been a competent appraisal by Wealden District Council, the County Archaeologist and the Environment Agency. Unfortunately, the council concerned and the advisers to the original applicants appear to have been less diligent than they might have been in the rush to profit from a windfall situation. The developers in this case are confirmed to be: Clarion Housing Group, Thakeham Homes and Latimer Developments. Previously, the site was owned by Tim Watson and then Gleeson Developments. We understand that Mrs Claire Turner and Christopher Bending are two of the planning officers now with responsibility for this application which reached the detailed (reserved matters) stage in August of 2018.

PERSIMMON PLC. DIRECTORS & COMPANY SECRETARY

DAVISON, Tracy Lazelle
Correspondence address: Persimmon House, Fulford, York, YO19 4FE
Role Active - Secretary
Appointed on - 30 September 2016

AITHAL, Anand
Correspondence address: Persimmon Plc, Persimmon House, Fulford, York, North Yorkshire, United Kingdom, YO19 4FE
Role Active - Director
Date of birth - February 1968
Appointed on - 1 January 2025
Nationality - British
Country of residence - United Kingdom
Identity verification due - 28 May 2026

BELL, Paula
Correspondence address: Persimmon House, Fulford, York, United Kingdom, YO19 4FE
Role Active - Director
Date of birth - January 1967
Appointed on - 1 September 2024
Nationality - British
Country of residence - United Kingdom
Identity verification due - 28 May 2026

DEPLEDGE, Alexandra Helen
Correspondence address: Persimmon House, Fulford, York, England, YO19 4FE
Role Active - Director
Date of birth - February 1981
Appointed on - 1 May 2023
Nationality - British
Country of residence - United Kingdom
Identity verification due - 28 May 2026

DEVLIN, Roger William
Correspondence address: Persimmon House, Fulford, York, United Kingdom, YO19 4FE
Role Active - Director
Date of birth - August 1957
Appointed on - 1 June 2018
Nationality - British
Country of residence - United Kingdom
Identity verification due - 28 May 2026

DURBIN, Annemarie Verna Florence
Correspondence address: Persimmon House, Fulford, York, Yorkshire, England, YO19 4FE
Role Active - Director
Date of birth - October 1963
Appointed on - 1 July 2020
Nationality - British, New Zealander
Country of residence - United Kingdom
Identity verification due - 28 May 2026

DUXBURY, Andrew James
Correspondence address: Persimmon House, Fulford, York, YO19 4FE
Role Active - Director
Date of birth - January 1975
Appointed on - 17 June 2024
Nationality - British
Country of residence - United Kingdom
Identity verification due - 28 May 2026

FINCH, Dean Kendal
Correspondence address: Persimmon House, Fulford, York, YO19 4FE
Role Active - Director
Date of birth - July 1966
Appointed on - 28 September 2020
Nationality - British
Country of residence - England
Identity verification due - 28 May 2026

O'SHEA, Colette
Correspondence address: Persimmon House, Fulford, York, England, YO19 4FE
Role Active - Director
Date of birth - April 1968
Appointed on - 1 May 2023
Nationality - British
Country of residence - England
Identity verification due - 28 May 2026

WYLLIE, Andrew
Correspondence address: Persimmon House, Fulford, York, England, YO19 4FE
Role Active - Director
Date of birth - December 1962
Appointed on - 4 January 2021
Nationality - British
Country of residence - England
Identity verification due - 28 May 2026

POSSIBLE REASONS FOR CALL IN OR  JUDICIAL REVIEW - There are many reasons to doubt the validity of the grant of planning consent on this site where Kelvin Williams was the officer presenting information to the Area Plans South planning committee, and his presentations concerning Berwick have been shown to be ultra vires. We do not yet have the recordings of Mr William's assertions but are looking into obtaining a copy to review what was said to the members of this council and if the law quoted was accurate.

For one thing, it appears from this aerial photograph that there are many more public footpaths than are shown on the ordnance survey maps. We are hoping to gather more information as to different years and testimony from persons who have lived in Herstmonceux for over 20 years.

Proposals for sewage disposal appear to us to constitute a health risk and may well be unsustainable. This was a windfall site, not part of the quota for Herstmonceux village, which goes some way to explaining why it is that there are no schooling places for the children of the proposed residential development.

JOBS

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

According to their website, 

RAPE OF THE LAND - Greenbelt in the UK is being eaten up to fatten property developers up and buy them new Bentley and Rolls Royce motor cars, in the process destroying village life with unsustainable cramming and loss of open spaces, footpaths and the like. In the picture above you see soakage tests under way, in line with an ancient well at the foot of this hill. Not only are they raping the countryside but also poisoning a historic water supply. Copyright photograph © April 26 2018, Herstmonceux Museum Limited. All rights reserved. You may not copy this picture except for educational use.

WD/2015/0090/ HERSTMONCEUX VILLAGE CONDITIONS A - Z INDEX

CLIMATE CHANGE ACT 2008 & THE NATIONAL PLANNING POLICY FRAMEWORK

The Climate Change Act 2008 spells out the standards for emissions that add to global warming. These include houses that are as near energy self-sufficient as they might be and electric or other zero carbon vehicles.

The objective is to get the United Kingdom below 1990 emission levels by the year 2050. It's a tall order no matter how you look at it, requiring new houses to be built with energy harvesting features, none of which are evident on any plans as we write and must be included. Especially where Clarion claim to endorse sustainable policies.

ABOUT HERSTMONCEUX VILLAGE & PLANNING APPLICATION WD/2015/0090/MOA

The village at Herstmonceux is served by a very few local shops and one junior school that is overloaded. Locals are being priced out of the housing market steadily - a trend that is not in accord with a sustainable society. How then will a dubious windfall grant of permission for seventy houses that were not in the local plan, suddenly find the services for those houses - where services are already stretched? Most villagers believe that this was a moment of madness on the part of the Area Plans South Committee, where they followed flawed guidance from Kelvin Williams, quite possibly as was granted in the village of Berwick, but was undone when a Judicial Review revealed flawed advice from Wealden's planning officers.

THE APPLICANTS

The original application to develop this land was filed in December 2014 in the name of Tim Watson and (possibly joint) land owner Sue Goldsmith. This application was withdrawn and a second identical application was filed in January of 2015 in the name of Gleeson Developments Limited. The proposal was approved subject to negotiations as to reserved matters which included drainage for the 70 houses proposed.

According to Wealden's Administration & Technology Manager, the applicant, Clarion Housing Group is working with Thakeham Homes Ltd, a company that appears to specialise in village developments, as far as we can see from their website. This is not surprising given the veritable land rush in 2014-2015 when councils were handing out consents like confetti hoping to make up for their lack of foresight in the provision of affordable housing in years gone by.

According to their website: "MJ Gleeson plc specialises in urban housing regeneration and strategic land trading. Latest Share Price: £ 567.00p at 11th January 2016." It is important to note the "Land Trading" element in the context of planning approvals that may have been pushed through on a very narrow margin and with some advice by planning officers that was not full, contained misquotes as to statute and the Local Plan, and failed to advise on other material considerations.

OBJECTIONS

Apart from the fact that there are no places at the local school and public transport is one bus every hour from Stagecoach - with journey times to Eastbourne of around an hour, Herstmonceux benefits from a very rare generating building from the turn of the century that is now a working Museum, and that Museum  is linked historically to the Windmill at Windmill Hill. At the moment you can see across the field from the public footpaths to both buildings - one of the rarest views in the world - and a reminder of the days when windmills ground flour for a local bakery to bake the daily loaves.

This generating building relies on water from an ancient well and the well is at the foot of the hill on which Gleeson Developments would like to build around 70 houses. A blot on the landscape maybe, but it gets worse. Water from the hill feeds the ancient well. It follows that any land contamination from the construction process, or in years to come from the domestic development, will filter down to the water table and enter the well water. The water level in the well rises and falls with rainfall from the gently sloping hill. There is no escaping this fact. But so far there have been no assurances or confirmation of a Bond to cater for future claims.

HINKLEY, CALIFORNIA - GROUND WATER CONTAMINATION - The town of Hinkley, California, located in the Mojave Desert, (about 121 miles driving distance north-northeast of Los Angeles) had its groundwater contaminated with hexavalent chromium starting in 1952, resulting in a legal case against Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) and a multimillion-dollar settlement in 1996. The legal case was dramatized in the film Erin Brockovich, released in 2000.

Residents of Hinkley filed a class action against PG&E, encaptioned Anderson, et al. v. Pacific Gas and Electric (Superior Ct. for County of San Bernardino, Barstow Division, file BCV 00300.

In 1993, Erin Brockovich, a legal clerk to lawyer Edward L. Masry, investigated the apparent elevated cluster of illnesses in the community linked to hexavalent chromium. The efforts of Brockovich and Masry, and the plight of the people of Hinkley, became widely known when the film Erin Brockovich was released in 2000.

After many arguments, the case was referred to arbitration with maximum damages of $400 million. After the arbitration for the first 40 people resulted in roughly $110 million, PG&E reassessed its position and decided to end arbitration and settle the entire case. The case was settled in 1996 for $333 million, the largest settlement ever paid in a direct-action lawsuit in U.S. history.

In 2006, PG&E agreed to pay $295 million to settle cases involving another 1,100 people statewide for hexavalent chromium-related claims. In 2008, PG&E settled the last of the cases involved with the Hinkley claims for $20 million.

TAINTED CONSENT

That would mean that every person buying a house on this field would be first in the chain of litigation claims. All the householders would need to do is allow herbicides and pesticides from their gardens to enter the watercourse. The same goes for engine oils and paints.

Knowing that this is sure to be a future issue, the Museum operators will need to constantly monitor activities in the field next door to be able to prove who the culprits are. The house owners, even if they are at fault, will then need to claim against their house insurance - and they may well find that they are not covered where no 106 Agreement exists and there is no Bond to cater for contamination claims. If their home insurance covers claims against negligent development, and/or the grant of a permission that then proves to be void, their homes would have to be demolished. In such cases the developers would need to compensate the home buyers for not making appropriate provision and/or otherwise safeguarding the planning consent.

It may also be that where this field suffers from flooding at the other end, that has to be provided for at the design stage, that remedial and preventative drainage is likely to alter subsoil water flow characteristics - leading to wider claims, such as with landslip. It all depends on the soil characteristics and geological strata juxtaposition.

At the moment the local authority are being asked to explain which of their officers provided information to the committee who passed the application. Other questions also need to be answered as to Declarations of Interest, since this application was passed by only one vote. It may well be that after scrutiny, the planning consent is deemed to be void. Members voting on applications need to do so on an informed basis. If there is any failure to advise on the part of the officers, such as Kelvin Williams, the district planning officer. The Chief Executive officer of this council is Charlie Lant.

CONSTRUCTION

In light of the above, every stage of the construction process will need to be monitored to be sure that if the development goes ahead despite the know issues, that there is a photographic record of who did what. We are off to a good start with exploratory holes being dug at the top of the hill near an specimen oak and another exploratory hole or trench being dug not many feet from the ancient well.

FOR THE RICH & THOSE ON BENEFITS

On their website Gleeson say: "Owner occupiers shoulder responsibility for their homes & are stakeholders in society, which is why we refuse to sell our homes to private landlords. We are happy to see our customers profit from their purchase but we do not wish to put the profit into the pockets of private landlords."

The truth is that the houses that will be built on this field in Herstmonceux will be bought by private landlords for renting. This is what is happening in the village and outlying hamlets. Why? Because working families cannot afford to live in Herstmonceux, with own transport being a prerequisite and these days that means two cars per family. Families on low incomes will qualify for Housing Benefit and on that benefit landlords grow fat. It is only with Housing Benefits that these houses will be occupied - making the affordable housing situation worse.

PERSIMMON  HOUSING PLC CONTACTS

.....

CLARION CUSTOMER CARE

Existing home owners should contact the Customer Care department:

Persimmon plc, 

Registered Office: Persimmon House, 

Fulford, 

York

YO19 4FE

UK

Registered in England No. 1818486

WATER RIGHTS - Clarion Housing Group and Thakeham Homes are in danger of spoiling an ancient well that supplies water to many concerns in this vicinity. In the picture you can see a hired digger scooping out trenches to test drainage by pouring in water and measuring the rate of absorption by the soil. It seems to us that if you build houses on the ground that feeds the ancient well, that contamination from garden treatments such as Roundup and engine oils, etc., will find its way into this well leading to claims against the owners of the houses who would have been sold a pup, and/or against the Council for approving the proposal, by way of a negligence claim, and/or against the vendors or developers. Any way you look at it the developers and Council concerned should take steps to ensure that no development takes place until the proper tests and evaluations have been completed, and after that stage, to ensure that any houses built in this location will not be on a path that includes the water table that feeds the ancient well.

Any failure to conduct the proper tests and house situation, along with safe sewage disposal, may tempt the Secretary of State to call in the application. We imagine that all of those with a financial interest in this piece of greenbelt will want to resolve issues before it starts to get complicated. Copyright photograph © April 26 2018, Herstmonceux Museum Limited. All rights reserved. You may not copy this picture except for educational use.

LINKS & REFERENCE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persimmon_plc

https://www.charleschurch.com

https://www.persimmonhomes.com/

https://www.latimerhomes.com/

https://thakeham.com/

https://www.clarionhg.com/

http://www.pge.com/

http://mj.gleeson-homes.co.uk/

http://www.gleeson-homes.co.uk/

http://www.taylorwimpey.co.uk
http://www.sir-robert-mcalpine.com
http://www.barratthomes.co.uk
http://www.wates.co.uk
http://www.redrow.co.uk/

http://www.taylorwoodrowinternational.com

Latimer homes

Thakeham Homes Ltd

Clarion Housing Group Limited

Charles Church Developments Limited

Persimmon PLC Public Limited Company

Barratt Homes

Cherry Homes

Gleeson Homes

Mcalpine
M J Gleeson

Redrow Homes

Taylor Wimpey
Taylor Woodrow International

Wates

Latimer Development Limited

Thakeham Homes Limited

Charles Church Development Limited

Clarion Housing Group Limited

Barratt Homes

Cherry Homes

Gleeson Homes

Mcalpine
M J Gleeson

Persimmon plc

Redrow Homes

Taylor Wimpey

Wates

WD/2015/0090/ HERSTMONCEUX VILLAGE CONDITIONS A - Z INDEX

LOS ANGELES (LA) TIMES APRIL 2015

Maneuvering his pickup through this Mojave Desert town, resident Daron Banks pointed at empty lot after empty lot.

"Last time I was here there was a home right here. There was a home here, there was a home here," he said, making his way down the bumpy road in the place made famous by the 2000 film "Erin Brockovich."

Fifteen years after the film showed triumphant residents winning a $333-million settlement with Pacific Gas & Electric Co. for contaminating its water — and nearly 20 years after the settlement itself — Hinkley is emptying out, and those who stay still struggle to find resolution.

For residents, questions remain about the safety of the water, just how much contamination PG&E caused and how to fix it.

This year, a final cleanup plan is moving toward approval. Last month, a long-awaited, five-year study to determine how much contamination PG&E may be responsible for finally got underway.

"At some point in the next few years we're going to get some closure," Banks said.

But today there's little left in Hinkley beyond some scattered homes and acres of alfalfa and other grasses, planted to help clean the contamination.

"You had a great community out here and now it's gone," said resident Roger Killian.

Hinkley was a small farming community in the 1990s when residents learned that groundwater was polluted with chromium 6, a cancer-causing heavy metal. It had seeped into the water after being dumped into unlined ponds at the utility company's compressor station in the 1950s and '60s.

Since then, hundreds of residents have left. Property values dropped because of the stigma surrounding the town, and PG&E launched a buyout program.

Roberta Walker, a plaintiff in the original lawsuit and Banks' mother-in-law, said that at the time of the settlement, residents like her believed the plume of contamination was limited to a well-defined area around the compressor station.

But in 2009, PG&E "let it get away from them and it started migrating toward other properties," said Lisa Dernbach, a senior engineering geologist specialist with the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board, the state agency overseeing the cleanup. That resulted in a $3.6-million fine against the company in 2012, she said.

Jeff Smith, a PG&E spokesman, said what looked like growth of the plume was actually the result of additional testing in areas that had previously gone unexamined. Dernbach said the migration happened after the utility changed pumping in some extraction wells.

More recently, the contamination plume appears to have shrunk. Kevin Sullivan, director of chromium remediation for PG&E, said a system installed in 2007 to treat the contamination with injections of ethanol has reduced the chromium by 40%.

Starting in 2010, PG&E offered to either provide clean water or buy properties of residents whose wells tested positive for chromium.

Smith said that when the program was announced, there was a high level of anxiety in the community and many residents wanted to sell their properties rather than take the water. The company, he said, wants to see Hinkley thrive.

"I think sometimes it's misconstrued that PG&E wanted to come in and purchase a tremendous amount of land in Hinkley and that was just not the original intent," he said.

Between 2010 and October 2014, when the program was formally discontinued, PG&E purchased about 300 properties, he said.

With residents leaving, the school could no longer be sustained. It shut down two years ago.

The owner of the property that houses the town's post office and only market recently approached PG&E asking to sell and the utility agreed to buy, Smith said. The post office closed last month and the market will soon follow, an employee said.

As residents leave, the cleanup has progressed and technologies have improved. About 250 acres of alfalfa and other grasses now dot the town where some properties once stood and are used to help convert chromium 6 into the micronutrient chromium 3.

But despite the progress, many Hinkley residents still worry about how much chromium 6 will remain in the water. PG&E is required to clean up to the levels at which chromium 6 naturally occurs in the groundwater — a number known as the background level.

A study commissioned by PG&E a few years ago said chromium 6 naturally occurred in Hinkley groundwater at levels of 3.1 parts per billion.

"Anything above 3.1 provided a lot of anxiety to the people in Hinkley," said Dernbach, of the water control board.

Last year, the state of California set a safe drinking water standard of 10 parts per billion.

Although levels of chromium 6 nearest to the compressor station — where no residents remain — exceed that by large numbers, PG&E's testing in domestic wells elsewhere in the community shows chromium 6 levels below 10 parts per billion, most often between 0 and 5, Sullivan said.

Smith, the PG&E spokesman, said the state-designated level has helped ease some residents' concerns.

But others say they are disturbed that chromium 6 is showing up in their wells at all. Some say neighbors and family members have suffered ailments they believe were caused by the contamination, leading them to believe that even low chromium levels are dangerous.

The safe drinking water standard adopted by the state — which is hundreds of times greater than a non-enforceable public health goal set by the state Environmental Protection Agency — has been criticized as too high by some environmental groups.

For years, residents questioned whether the study commissioned by PG&E putting the background level at 3.1 parts per billion was even accurate.

Banks solicited help from John Izbicki, a U.S. Geological Survey research hydrologist who has studied naturally occurring chromium 6 in the Mojave Desert. With pressure from residents, PG&E acknowledged that its earlier study was lacking. It is paying for a five-year study led by Izbicki that is expected to conclusively determine the background level.

At a community meeting this month, fewer than a dozen residents gathered in the Hinkley Community Center to hear Izbicki describe his upcoming study.

Izbicki said water samples would be sent to Germany, Nevada, Virginia, Northern California and other places for testing. Some of it would be handled in the same USGS labs that do testing for NASA.

When he was done, the meeting's facilitator asked longtime resident McHenry Cooke, 81, if he would "trust the data."

"I haven't reviewed it all," he said skeptically.

As the meeting wrapped up, John Turner, who volunteers to keep the community center open, said he felt optimistic about the town's future. For years, community meetings have been filled with negativity, he said, but this one was productive.

He hopes PG&E will play a role in helping to rebuild the community so residents can move forward. "It's time," he said.  By Paloma Esquivel

GENUINELY AFFORDABLE HOME EXAMPLE - A nicely integrated solar home - as far as we know the 1st proposed. Flatpack building offers truly affordable housing for a sustainable society. A sustainable society is one where landlords do not earn immoral earnings from the backs of the young. the whole basis of Conservative politics is to keep the landed gentry, landed. A circular economy is one that is fair. High rents are simply not fair.

Why should some people have to work all of their lives and never own their own home. If you work it out, those paying extortionate rents to private landlords will be paying more for accommodation during their lifetime than those who can afford to get on the property ladder.

One solution is to build more affordable houses. Every citizen should start out on the basic premise that he or she is mortgage-able. That can only be the case if society makes it so. At the moment the State discriminates against the poorer members of society in Article 14 terms, with councils geared up to pay high rents, but not prepared to ensure that affordable houses are available to rent or buy in their area.

GREED IS DESTROYING OUR HERITAGE - Heritage views are fast disappearing from villages as councils scramble to give developers free reign in return for more rates to bolster their coffers, despite the fact that we are in the middle of a climate emergency. Such councils and the developers taking advantage of them are nothing short of climate criminals in the view of country lovers and history buffs. Charles Church Developments Limited shares the same registered office as Persimmon plc. Potentially raising questions as to water pollution, stemming from their conviction in Wales around 2021, when they were fined something like £433,000 in Newport Magistrates.

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