Environmental Assessment

Sustainability Appraisal

The first of these processes is called strategic environmental assessment. This is required by European Law. It makes us consider the likely effect of our plan on the environment.

The second process is called sustainability appraisal. This is required by UK law. This makes us think about how our policies might affect our society and economy as well as the environment.

We do both of these things at the same time when we are writing our planning documents. We will need to write a number of different documents as the local plan is prepared. When we talk about Sustainability Appraisal (SA), we are referring to both processes and all of the documents we have written. This is to avoid any confusion.

The SA Scoping Report helps us to identify the key issues that we should consider when appraising the new local plan.

We will prepare detailed SA reports at each stage of the local plan. These will be published alongside the main consultation documents.

Appropriate Assessment

A third process, called Appropriate Assessment (AA), says if our plan will harm certain types of wildlife habitat known as European Sites. We will carry out an AA screening exercise when we publish a detailed draft of the new local plan.