The Scottish Government

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Introduction

1.1 The Purpose of This Document

The purpose of this Edinburgh Agglomeration Noise Action Plan is to describe how The Scottish Government and its partners propose to deliver their obligations under the Environmental Noise Directive. This draft action plan for the Edinburgh agglomeration was the subject of a consultation exercise between May and July 2008 and has been amended where appropriate as a result of comments received during that consultation.

The European Parliament and Council Directive for Assessment and Management of Environmental Noise 2002/49/EC, more commonly referred to as the Environmental Noise Directive ( END), was published in the Official Journal of The EU in July 2002. This directive deals with noise from road, rail, and air traffic, and from agglomerations. It focuses on the impact of such noise on individuals, complementing existing EU legislation, which sets standards for noise emissions from specific sources.

The three main objectives of the Directive are as follows:

• To determine the noise exposure of the population through noise mapping.
• To make information available on environmental noise to the public.
• To establish Action Plans based on the mapping results, to reduce noise levels where necessary, and to preserve environmental noise quality where it is good.

To embrace their devolved responsibility to deliver the requirements of the END legislation the Scottish Executive published the Environmental Noise (Scotland) Regulations 2006. The Scottish legislation describes a two round process to manage environmental noise. This is now well underway and as can be seen by reference to Table 1. Task One, Two and Three have been completed This revised draft document and the related consultation process have been developed to finalise Task Three before a summary is submitted to the commission.

Table 1: Key Tasks in the Scottish Legislation - Round 1

The strategic noise maps referred to in Table 1 are the starting point for Action Planning. Their initial analysis, using a prioritisation matrix developed as noted in Section 4 of this document, provided a focus for deriving actions to manage noise where it is deemed there is a need. Where the prioritisation matrix indicated an area to possibly manage noise, that area has been put forward as a Candidate Noise Management Areas ( CNMA), as described in Section 4. A methodology is under development to determine whether or not the CNMA will actually become a noise Management Area ( NMA) and this process is described in Section 4.

A description of the European Directive on Environmental Noise is provided in Section 2 together with a brief outline of the Scottish Legislative framework relative to environmental noise. This section also provides an overview of the strategic noise maps and provides the rationale behind the selection of areas and sources that have been mapped to date.

Section 3 provides an explanation of the Action Planning process and the infrastructure of the groups set up to assist in the delivery of an Action Plan for Scotland. In reading the Action Plan it is important to bear in mind that Action Plans manage noise issues and effects, including noise reduction if necessary. The Action Plans for the agglomerations of Glasgow and Edinburgh also aim to protect quiet areas against an increase in noise.

A methodology for determination of Candidate Quiet Areas ( CQA)has been described in Section 5. A methodology is under development to determine whether or not the CQA will actually become a noise Quiet Area ( QA) and this process is described in Section 5

Section 6 sets out and describes the alignment of existing initiatives to be incorporated into the Action Planning process.

Finally Section 7 describes the next steps in the noise mapping process.

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