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Strategic Environmental Assessment
A Consultation on Proposed Legislative Measures to
Introduce Strategic Environmental Assessment in Scotland

3. THE PRINCIPLES OF THE PROPOSED BILL TO GIVE EFFECT TO THE SEA COMMITMENT IN A PARTNERSHIP FOR A BETTER SCOTLAND

3.1 A Partnership for a Better Scotland produced by the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties following the 2003 elections to the Scottish Parliament includes a commitment in the following terms

"We will legislate to introduce strategic environmental assessment to ensure that the full environmental impacts of all new strategies, programmes and plans developed by the public sector are properly considered."

3.2 The intention to legislate was announced in Parliament as part of the Scottish Executive’s programme on 28 May 2003. This announcement did not indicate whether the legislation would be in the form of a Bill or Regulations. Ministers have subsequently decided on the 2 stage implementation described in section 1 of this consultation document, and an announcement to that effect was made to the Scottish Parliament on 23 October 2003 (in response to question S2W-03101 about SEA). It is too soon to say exactly when the Bill will be introduced into the Scottish Parliament or how soon it will come into force after it receives Royal Assent, beyond the commitment that it will be in early course.

3.3 The key principles proposed for the Bill are that:

• it will be free standing and not seek to introduce requirements on SEA into existing legislation

• it will extend the scope of application of the Directive but not materially affect the SEA process, allowing for a smooth transition from one regime to the other (eg it will not modify the criteria for determining the likely environmental effects of a strategy, plan or programme that appear in Annex II to the Directive; it will apply the Directive’s provisions on consultation, information, decision making and monitoring to the wider range of strategies, plans and programmes)

• it will include a pre-screening mechanism to allow strategies, plans or programmes with no possible significance to the environment to be exempted from the screening, and therefore the further SEA, process

• given the desired consistency of process, it will incorporate and extend the provisions of the Scottish Regulations made to implement the Directive which will then be revoked

• it will extend the scope of the Directive to include "strategies" to be defined as

"strategies which are subject to preparation and/or adoption by an authority at national, regional or local level or which are prepared by an authority for adoption, through a legislative procedure by Parliament or Government".

• it will remove the qualification in the Directive that plans and projects are to be subject to SEA only if they are required by legislative or other means and only if they set a framework for future development consent of projects. Strategies will also not be subject to those qualifications

• it will include provisions to ensure that voluntary strategies, plans and programmes developed by a number of authorities working in co-operation are subject to SEA and that a lead authority is identified (in effect, extending the provision in draft Regulation 2 that make a similar provision for "required" plans and programmes)

• it will include provisions allowing the Scottish Ministers to exempt certain categories of authority from the SEA requirement (eg smaller bodies such as individual schools or hospitals), as long as compliance with the Directive is maintained.

• in extending the scope of the Directive, it will require environmental reports for a wider range of strategies, plans and programmes but it will not add to the information required to form part of such reports (ie there will be no modification to Annex I of the Directive). It will, however, include an enabling provision allowing the Scottish Ministers to add to the requirements in Annex I if this becomes appropriate.

• it will apply to the wider range of strategies, plans and programmes for which the first formal act is after a certain date (on or after Royal Assent but to be specified) and to the wider range of strategies, plans and programmes for which the first formal act is before that date but which are not adopted by another specified date (probably, like the Directive, 2 years after the first specified date). It will, however contain transitional provisions allowing for any SEA begun under the Regulations implementing the Directive to be continued under the provisions of the Bill.

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