The LI’s response to the Environmental Outcomes Report session

By specializing in the nationwide stage, we acknowledge there are efforts to streamline regulatory processes with the chance afforded by Brexit. We welcome the Authorities’s dedication to retaining the worth and rigour of environmental evaluation and looking for higher environmental outcomes.

In our response to the Authorities’s proposals, the Panorama Institute has expressed a lot of issues –

1. We strongly urged the Authorities to revise its definition of panorama. 

   The restricted scope wherein ‘panorama’ is outlined is inaccurate. Its present definition of panorama, as set out in DEFRA’s Environmental Enchancment Plan (EIP), is fallacious, being restricted to ‘designated landscapes’ corresponding to Nationwide Parks (NPs), Areas of Excellent Pure Magnificence (AONBs), Websites of Particular Scientific Curiosity (SSSIs), Nationwide Nature Reserves and proposed Panorama Restoration Areas.

   The Panorama Institute promotes the view that panorama is in all places. Nicely-informed planning, design and administration of the panorama embraces synthetic in addition to pure parts, reinforces individuals’s sense of place and improves high quality of life, contributing to well being and wellbeing, offering the setting for our heritage and for biodiversity and is a key consider addressing local weather change and supporting biodiversity.  Due to this fact, we want to see a transparent and broad definition of panorama within the Authorities’s proposals and for plans and initiatives to be assessed on the idea of their potential impacts on account of their nature or scale relatively than their proximity to areas which are already designated as protected.

2. We’ve issues that proposing to switch the established laws with new drafts, the physique of case regulation, judgements and consequent steering that has advanced over thirty years or extra can be misplaced. This in flip could result in uncertainty, authorized problem and related prices in money and time. There can even be a possible lack of continuity when coping with plans or initiatives which have worldwide dimensions, together with these referring to the devolved nations.
3. The LI recognises that there are some shortcomings and complexities within the current system of evaluation and that outcomes are vital. Nevertheless, the LI is anxious that, in looking for to simplify the established processes which have advanced to cope with advanced points by way of skilled recommendation and goal steering, the outcomes that consequence might not be those that finest shield the environment.
4. The Authorities’s EOR proposals check with England solely and additional improve the disparities of equal evaluation requirements in Northern Eire, Scotland and Wales. This provides one other stage of complexity for builders and decision-makers. There may be clearly advantage in opening or extending the dialog with administrations within the devolved nations. This might be of specific relevance when coping with plans or initiatives with cross-boundary implications.
5. The session doc clearly states the proposed EOR system will ‘exchange’ each EIA and SEA. Nevertheless, it’s not clear whether or not the Authorities intends to scrap the prevailing requirement for EIA and SEA utterly. Improvement proposals will nonetheless have to retain and embrace some stage of evaluation.

We urged the Authorities to assume once more. Any new system wants to guard, preserve and improve the pure and constructed surroundings for public profit. Accordingly, we really feel the brand new EOR system would vastly profit from the among the current optimistic and valued facets of the prevailing environmental evaluation processes.

We stand prepared to help the Authorities in getting it proper for individuals, communities and the surroundings.