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Environmental Assessment of Development Plans: Interim Planning Advice
Quality control
156. Article 12 requires Member States to ensure that environmental reports are of sufficient quality to meet the requirements of the Directive and must tell the EC what measures they have taken concerning the quality of reports through Regulations and Circular. It is anticipated that the Scottish Ministers will ensure quality of reports by issuing and updating this guidance, revising the guidance in light of experience, and periodically commissioning research to independently assess the compliance and quality of published environmental reports. Quality control is also enhanced by the involvement of the consultation authorities and the public (including non-governmental organisations), by the use of teams of assessors with knowledge and experience of different disciplines within local authorities, and the examination of reports when structure plans are submitted to the Scottish Ministers or local plans submitted to Reporters in connection with local plan public inquiries.
Conclusion
157. Environmental assessment can help development plans make a more effective contribution to achieving the environmental aims of sustainable development. This advice sets out one approach and provides some examples of alternatives. Other, more sophisticated and resource intensive techniques exist and it is for planning authorities to decide the form of environmental assessment that is best suited to the circumstances of their area. Environmental assessment should be seen as an integral part of development plan preparation; conducted in this way it can assist structure and local plans in meeting the needs of the current population without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
Glossary
Aim - in this context, an intention, objective, or a way in which something is to be done or achieved.
Compensation measures - measures designed and intended to off-set, or at least to try to off-set, adverse residual effects of a development or other change.
Cross compliance - occurs where policies interact to support related and interdependent environmental objectives, for example, where one policy, say policy X is not only consistent with another policy - Y - but policy X actually relies on policy Y to achieve its objectives.
Cumulative effects - these effects can be caused by a number of developments which, individually and in themselves, may have insignificant effects, but together combine to create a significant effect; for example, too many houses built in the countryside can change and diminish the character of an open landscape; cumulative effects can also be caused by the combination of several types of effects on the same feature or receptor, such as three developments near a housing area - one causing dust, the second causing smell and the third causing noise.
Designated consultation authorities - these are the bodies that need to be consulted at specific stages, namely: screening, scoping, consultation draft plan, formal submission/
deposit of a plan and in respect of any transboundary effects. They will also need to be informed and provided with specified information upon adoption/approval of the plan. For the purposes of this advice, they are assumed to be the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Scottish Natural Heritage and the Scottish Ministers (Historic Scotland).
Environmental report - the report required to be published with a finalised plan or programme in accordance with Article 5 and including all relevant matters listed in Annex I of the Directive.
Long-term effects are those that tend to be persistent, they may be over several or many years, or they may be of indeterminate duration, whether or not they are regarded as permanent.
Medium-term effects are those that may last a few years, such as the effects of mineral working of a quarry with an operational life of three years after preparation works and before restoration. Visual effects of a new development may be substantial in the short-term but may diminish in the medium to long-term as screen planting and other landscaping matures.
Mitigation measures - measures designed and intended to reduce adverse environmental effects that cannot be avoided.
Objectives - in this context, an intention, a goal, something which is to be done or achieved.
Permanent effects are those that are unlikely ever to cease or significantly change, throughout the life of a built development or change of use that has no time limit. Many of the effects of most forms of built development, once completed, will be regarded as permanent but visual and landscape effects may be reduced over time by landscaping.
Policy convergence - occurs when the policies and proposals of plans and programmes are consistent with each other and with the environmental objectives, as tested by the environmental criteria.
Policy divergence - occurs when the policies and proposals of plans and programmes are inconsistent with each other and/or with the environmental objectives, as tested by the environmental criteria. Thus, the policies are pulling in different directions creating uncertainty, internal inconsistency and tensions in the plan.
Public - the public are specifically defined in Articles 2(d) and 6(4) of the Directive so as to include the public affected, likely to be affected or to have an interest in a plan or programme, together with relevant non-governmental organisations such as those promoting environmental protection and other organisations concerned. Article 6(4) provides for the Scottish Ministers to define the public for the purposes of consultation. The public must be consulted at specific stages, namely: consultation draft plan, formal submission/deposit of a plan and in respect of any transboundary effects. They will also need to be informed and provided with specified information upon adoption/approval of the plan. The public may play a role in the assessment process either individually or collectively.
Residual effects - are effects that are left over after all measures have been taken to avoid or reduce the effects (mitigation measures) and which themselves may require compensatory measures to offset their effects.
Scoping - the stage in the assessment process which seeks to define what the environmental report should cover and how environmental effects should be assessed and presented.
Screening - the stage in the assessment process which determines whether a particular plan or programme, or alteration, should be subject to the assessment process, in accordance with the Directive.
Secondary effects - these may be indirect effects such as increased disturbance to breeding birds in woodland adjacent to a high density residential development, resulting from increased noise and activity and access to the woodland, even though the development did not directly affect the woodland site.
Short-term effects - are typical of those that may occur during construction stage of a development, for example, the increased traffic going to and from the site during, say, a six months construction period.
Significant environmental effects - effects on the environment which are significant in the context of the development plan, see section 3 for a fuller discussion of "significant" effects.
Strategic environmental assessment - (SEA) is the common name (acronym) attributed to the process of environmental assessment of plans and programmes, described in this Advice.
Sustainability appraisal - the assessment of a plan or programme which is extended to include social and economic effects of the plan. Where an objectives/criteria based method is used in the assessment it requires socio-economic objectives and criteria to be defined and used as well as environmental ones.
Synergistic effects - are similar to cumulative effects but the result of them is that the effect of the whole change is greater than the sum of the individual effects. For example, the steady attrition of a particular area of habitat may combine to cause a reduction in the population of a particular species, even though on its own any one of the losses would not reduce the population - a cumulative effect, but after a certain point is reached, further losses would result in the loss of that and several other dependent species from the site altogether, because a critical threshold had been reached where the habitat became too small a unit to support all the typical species. Another form of synergistic effect would the combination of different pollutants, for example from traffic, combining in ways that eliminated plants tolerant of each pollutant on its own but not all of them together.
Temporary effects - are those with a limited or finite duration, whether short, medium or long-term and irrespective of whether the likely date of the cessation of the effects can be estimated.
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