In a Nutshell: Strategic Environmental Assessments

The government's recently published a 100-page draft practical guide to Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), out now for consultation, makes for some intriguing summer reading.

In the same way that the human rights legislation opened a new door for those objecting to particular projects, so this new regime will inevitably lead to legal challenges.

The SEA process involves, ultimately, the production of a report and the government’s own regulatory impact assessment of the new rules acknowledges that "the potential for inadequate reports to lead to judicial review cannot be ruled out".

Publication of the draft guide was not fortuitous. Largely unheralded, new regulations have just come into forces which require the relevant authorities to consider the environmental effect of a wide range of plans and programmes. The driver is a European Commission directive which came into force on 21 July.

Local planning authorities are right in the firing line because development plans are covered by this new regime. But so too are government departments and Primary Care Trusts (in respect of their local delivery plans).

The picture for local authorities in England should become clearer soon because the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act introduces a requirement that all land use and spatial plans must be accompanied by a so-called sustainability appraisal. The intention is that this should comply with the SEA directive.

The Act, in other words, has taken the SEA requirements on board. As a result the following should meet the requirements of the directive:

• Local Development Documents (comprising development plan documents and supplementary planning documents);
• Local Development Plans (Wales);
• Regional Spatial Strategies (i.e. revisions to existing Regional Planning Guidance).

Sustainability appraisals will be an integral part of the land use and spatial plan-making process. These will cover the full range of social and economic effects of plans in addition to the environmental effects required by the SEA directive.

Helpfully, the government is preparing a draft guide to help planning authorities negotiate this new minefield. That guidance should be published shortly.

The list of plans and programmes covered by the regulations is a deal more extensive that development plans per se.

The new rules also cover area plans in Northern Ireland, minerals local plans, waste local plans, combined minerals and waste local plans, subject local plans (Scotland) and the Mayor’s spatial development strategy (London).

Regional transport strategies will fall under the ambit of this new regime, as will regional economic strategies, regional housing strategies and community strategies.

Also in the frame will be local air quality action plans, local housing and transport strategies, recreation and sports strategies and action plans.

However, that is not the definitive list. The new rules apply to the offshore wind farm licensing rounds, water company resource plans and even salmon action plans.

Had the government airport policy document been published after 21 July 2004 it would have been a candidate.

Should the government decide at some later date that a programme of new nuclear power stations is needed, that would certainly come under the regulations.

They cover plans and programmes prepared for agriculture, forestry, fisheries, energy, industry, transport, waste management, telecommunications, tourism as well as traditional land use plans as prepared by councils.

How onerous will this new regime be?  No-one knows at this stage. But on the basis of pilot studies and assessments carried out with a number of local planning authorities (including Cotswold District Council, Luton Borough Council, Newcastle City Council, Swale Borough Council, Vale of White Horse District Council and Oxfordshire County Council, Hampshire County Council, Portsmouth City Council and Southampton City Council) the answer appears to be not too much.

The costs of SEAs vary widely, depending on factors including the scale and nature of the plan or programme being assessed, the amount of information to be compiled, and the types of consultation involved.

A one-off SEA of a local authority development plan might cost between £10,000 and £50,000, mostly in staff time and/or costs of consultants.

If all 800-odd development plans across the UK were fully replaced every five years, total average annual expenditure on SEAs has been calculated at between £2-4m.

At the other extreme, a regional strategy, or a sectoral plan such as a Water Resources Plan, could cost £50,000 to £200,000, particularly if much new data had to be collected for a first-time exercise.

In many cases, expenditure on public consultation is a key factor.

For planning authorities, much of the cost of consultation is incurred anyway under existing requirements. For plans and programmes covering large areas, or which involve controversial proposals, consultation is more difficult and expensive, particularly if resource-intensive methods are used.

The government, though, has argued that effective consultation at this stage can help to reduce problems later when the plan or programme is implemented.

It also claims that as a result of  SEA, planning consent decisions for development with environmental implications should be better informed and may in at least some cases be faster, since the strategic environmental questions (alternatives, cumulative effects etc) relating to the development plan and any other plans or programmes considered would have been considered beforehand.

That’s an upside. The requirements will mean that development plan making is almost certainly going to take a tad longer.

The government admits that "there will no doubt be cases where the additional requirements will produce delays in preparing plans and programmes, although there could be minimised by careful programming of work. There may also be cases where extra bureaucracy will not be counterbalanced by improved environmental protection".

Although the regulations mean a new regime this is not all uncharted territory. Most planning authorities these days have had some experience of environmental impact assessment (EIA) in respect of individual projects.

And some government departments have considerable experience under their belts already. The Department of Trade and Industry is a case in point. It has been using SEA in relation to offshore oil and gas licensing. And it did considerable SEA work when it was considering sites for the second round of offshore wind farms.

If all else fails, at least one planning and environmental consultancy has set up a dedicated team to do SEA work. So planning authorities can find help if they need it, at a price.

Roger Milne

28 July 2004