Environmental Assessment deepdive: SA/SEA – Mitigation & monitoring

How we assess the impacts of development, plans and policies, otherwise known as Environmental Assessment, is going to change with the introduction of Environmental Outcome Reports (EOR). This change will be made possible through the powers in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill (LURB) and follow-up regulations and guidance.

What can we identify and learn from the current Sustainability Appraisal, Strategic Environmental Assessment and Environment Impact Assessment processes? And how do we ensure that the new system of assessment and the preparation of EORs works better?

PAS and DLUHC are holding a series of workshops to gather views from councils on the current challenges of undertaking Sustainability Appraisals, Strategic Environmental Assessments and Environment Impact Assessments.

There are known issues with the current process, such as

• Too much paperwork generated and an overly cautious approach to assessing impacts

• A lack of access to robust and consistent data

• Assessments, particularly at the project level, can be inaccurate and misleading and scientific uncertainty or implementation is often downplayed

• A lack of monitoring of the forecast impacts or mitigation, with many proposed mitigation measures are either not implemented as proposed or ineffective.

This deepdive follows on from an overview workshop held on the 29th June. If you missed it you can find out more on our webpages.

This deepdive session will be a discussion on what can we learn from the current systems challenges to inform the development of EOR as well as thinking about how EOR might work and, importantly, investigating the ‘fixes’ needed.

This workshop is the opportunity to explore these challenges and gather ‘real-world’ experiences of the current way of undertaking environmental assessment. Therefore, the workshop is aimed at those people within councils who produce, commission, review, assess or otherwise interact with Sustainability Appraisals, Strategic Environmental Assessments and Environment Impact Assessments. Be warned – the workshop is designed to be interactive, and you will be expected to take part in polls and breakout rooms so come prepared to share wisdom and opinions.

At the moment the separate deep dive events proposed are:

o EIA – Screening and Scoping - Monday 4th July 10-12

o EIA – Reviewing, monitoring and remediation issues - Wednesday 6th July 2-4

o SA/SEA – Assessment including data – Monday 11th July 10-12

o SA/SEA – Mitigation, monitoring and remediation – Tuesday 12th July 10-12

You can sign-up to just one or all of them.

This workshop and the other deepdives will be held using MS Teams and a link will be send out 24hrs prior to the events. The events are for those working in local government only so use a @gov.uk email address to sign up. Places on the deepdives will be limited and priority will be given to people within councils who produce, commission, review, assess or otherwise interact with Sustainability Appraisals, Strategic Environmental Assessments and Environment Impact Assessments.