Tracey Taylor says 105 more families raise Corby birth defect concerns
corby families have added 105 more sets of concerns to a scandal that first reached court in 2009, after a 15-month investigation gathered reports from people not involved in the original case. Tracey Taylor, a campaigner and mother, said it was heartbreaking to see the scale of the complaints grow, with some families describing limb differences and babies who did not survive.
The investigation found that 24 of the families who filled in questionnaires reported hand defects. That adds to the landmark High Court case in which negligence was ruled to have caused birth defects in 18 children after Corby Borough Council moved toxic waste from the Northamptonshire town’s main former steelworks.
Tracey Taylor and Shelby-Anne
Taylor has spent years collecting questionnaires for a public inquiry. She said: "It is heartbreaking to see that there are so many. I always knew that there were more families affected than those in the original case, but to actually be at 105 with limb differences and angel babies, it’s heartbreaking."
Her own family is part of that grief. Taylor’s daughter, Shelby-Anne, died when she was four days old in 1996 from heart, lung, kidney and ear defects, and Taylor said she worked alongside the reclamation six days a week while she was pregnant.
Issy Wright in Corby
Issy Wright told ITV News that she believes she may also have been affected. "I have three fingers on each hand, and my arms don’t straighten properly. They’re also slightly shorter than they should be. I’ve got a curvature in my spine and a small heart murmur as well. I’ve grown up very physically different to other people," she said.
Wright added: "It’s affected me a lot mentally and physically and yes, continues to, it never goes away." Her mother, Pippa, said the family had asked whether Issy had lived near toxic waste or was related to her father, and said both answers were no.
Deene Quarry and Environment Agency
Corby Borough Council has only ever admitted dumping the waste at Deene Quarry, a former landfill site on the outskirts of Corby that was later developed into Rockingham Speedway, which shut in 2018. Over the last decade, 19 incidents related to contaminated water and unidentified pollution around Deene Quarry have been reported to the Environment Agency.
That leaves the public inquiry work facing a wider question than the original court case alone: whether the families now coming forward can trace the same waste legacy through the same places, even as the council’s admitted dumping site remains the only one publicly acknowledged.
