Last month, the Environment Secretary George Eustice set out the Government’s vision for a post-Covid ‘green recovery’[1].  This included consultation on changes to the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process. There is currently no detail on what changes the Government are proposing and how significant these will be for EIA.  We await the official consultation this autumn.

If radical changes are planned, we could see a more streamlined and faster process, with space for innovation.  But we must ensure the process remains robust and focussed on avoiding and mitigating significant effects.  If the process is watered down too much, we risk undermining the determining authority’s confidence when making decisions, and decisions could be open to greater risk of judicial review and possibly greater impacts on the natural and human environment.

EIA is an important tool for enabling:

• developers to understand potential impacts of their schemes and identify suitable changes or mitigation measures to reduce impacts early in the design process;
• the determining authority’s planners and elected members to gain a thorough understanding of the nature of the development and the impact on the receiving environment, so they can confidently determine larger planning applications;
• members of the public and interested stakeholders to engage in the development of a proposal early in the process and provide their views which can shape the nature of the scheme and its design; and
• communication of the most important effects of a scheme to the wider community through the Non-Technical Summary.

Of course, we can engage with stakeholders and mitigate the effects of a development without EIA, but it brings together a wide range of topics in one place for greater scrutiny.  This helps developers and decision makers to focus on the key issues (significant effects).  Effective EIA can also help to avoid legal risks further down the line, such as judicial review of a planning decision.

It will be important to ensure that we still maintain a high standard of scrutiny and accountability in environmental policy to understand and minimise adverse impacts from development, ensuring that sufficient mitigation is secured.

The Government wants:

• The EIA process to be more focussed on science, less worried about legal risks, with more scope to innovate. This could provide multiple benefits if innovation includes rigorous assessment and as long as determining authorities have confidence in the outcomes. LUC provides independent expert advice to local authorities who have gaps in their own knowledge or who lack the confidence or capacity to fully engage in EIA (https://landuse.co.uk/services/environmental-impact-assessment/).
• To have environmental issues front loaded in the planning process and speed up the process by focusing on protection of species and habitats most affected. This is already an element of EIA, whereby early Scoping is designed to focus on issues where significant effects are likely, to minimise impacts further down the line.
• To invest in a Natural Capital and Ecosystem Assessment to inform baseline studies. This could indicate changes to the way we collect baseline data to inform EIA with the potential for changes to the suite of traditional site-specific baseline surveys.

Our EIA specialists are always working to make our EIAs more effective, proportionate, user friendly and cost effective. Our aim is to ensure the process helps rather than hinders developers to achieve planning consent – by being objective and clear about impacts and providing positive solutions through the design process and guidance on mitigation. We agree with IEMA and their call for any review of the process to be “evidence-based, recognising the economic, social and environmental benefits that EIA delivers”[2]. We will continue to monitor the Government’s proposals and will contribute our thoughts to any future consultation to ensure EIA policy is as strong as it can be.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/george-eustice-speech-on-environmental-recovery-20-july-2020

[2] https://www.iema.net/resources/news/2020/07/20/iema-responds-to-governments-commitment-to-put-nature-at-the-centre-of-a-green-recovery