Pipelines

[Unitof1]

Yes onedesk

Article 9

of the combined DIRECTIVE 97/11/EC of 3 March 1997
amending DIRECTIVE 85/337/EEC of 27 June 1985

“1. When a decision to grant or refuse development consent has been taken, the competent authority or authorities shall inform the public thereof in accordance with the appropriate procedures and shall make available to the public the following information:
- the content of the decision and any conditions attached thereto,
- the main reasons and considerations on which the decision is based,
- a description, where necessary, of the main measures to avoid, reduce
and, if possible, offset the major adverse effects.

This follows

Article 2

1. Member States shall adopt all measures necessary to ensure that, before CONSENT is given, projects likely to have significant effects on the environment by virtue, inter alia of their nature, size or location are made subject to a requirement for development consent and an assessment with regard to their effects.

Now in Article 1

’development consent’ means: the decision of the competent authority or
authorities which entitles the developer to proceed with the project.

But the CONSENT in Article 2 is not defined but I (this is an iffy bit) presume is different to ’development consent’by virtue of the "before" bit !

Now this is one of the many things that I don’t understand about EIAs, as said before (forget where probably got edited) –what is an eia? Could it be a procedure which requires an authoritative aceptance as in a "consents" or one combined eia with the development consent or are there two different consents and which “consent” first (if two are required).

Now it has been my experience that different authorities do things differently can they all be right? (yes probably)

[drpeterwardle]

Dr Peter here, at 1 in the morning on a friday here. Somebody said

"Old question -has anybody come across an EIA consent document? like the one for your village Dr"

The point I make (and cannot do in detail here despite said village being featured on TV news all over Christmas) is that said company did not (or if they did it is not in the public domain easily available or I may have made a mistake which I often do) did not produce an EIA or if they did they did not comply fully with IFA standards as others did.

Peter

(david I hope this complies with the AUP and I hope that no archaeologist was present)

[BAJR Host]

Thats fine Peter

"No job worth doing was ever done on time or under budget.."
Khufu

[1man1desk]

Posted by Unit of 1:

quote:Now this is one of the many things that I don’t understand about EIAs, as said before (forget where probably got edited) –what is an eia? Could it be a procedure which requires an authoritative aceptance as in a "consents" or one combined eia with the development consent or are there two different consents and which “consent” first (if two are required).

That's an easy question for once.

An EIA is a process whose principal purpose is to provide information about the potential environmental effects of certain categories of proposed development. The authority responsible for giving or refusing consent for the development is required to take that information into account in making its decision. The information is presented in the form of an Environmental Statement. In most cases, the EIA/ES is carried out as part of the preparation of an application for planning permission.

Therefore, the authority never consents to the EIA or the ES - they consent (or refuse consent) to the development, having taken the environmental information into account.

Of course, the environmental information is not the only thing they have to take into account, and the weight they place on the environmental information may vary from case to case and from authority to authority.

1man1desk

to let, fully furnished

[Unitof1]

Easy I dont think its easy –somewhere along the line the public are supposed to be involved for some totally unfathomable reason

I had got as far as Article 2:1 when the directive started to seem like meaningless mud

If we take onedecks

“the authority never consents to the EIA or the ES - they consent (or refuse consent) to the development, having taken the environmental information into account.”

Article 2:2. The environmental impact assessment may be [u]integrated into the existing procedures for consent </u>to projects in the Member States, or failing this, into other procedures or into procedures to be established to comply with the aims of this Directive.

I suppose a question could be: can a development be refused consent because of the EIA or can a development be granted acceptance in spite of an EIA. Do both cases need a judgement and how and who is the judge

This case has recently come to a conclusion (I think)
http://www.richardbuxton.co.uk/reference...&flag=name

which I had hoped might help out with my confusion with the consents in Article 2:1 but doesn’t much (note the length of battle that it took to get a final judgment on the definition of “development consent”). As I understand it in this example the great British government only got as far as Article 1: 2

’development consent’ means: the decision of the competent authority or authorities which entitles the developer to proceed with the project.

Before it lost the plot

Now how does this relate to the Drs pipelines which seem to do the consent and EIA in one go and objections dont seem to go to public inquires where as road schemes and TCPA and others do

[beamo]

UnitofOne

I work as a consultant within a multi-discplinary firm that is involved in lots of EIAs and we have been looking at the imnplications of the Crytal Palace judgements - essentially there are two linked cases here that were finalised last year - Barker/Crystal Palace and White City/Crystal Palace.

As far as our planner and EIA team are concerned, the judgements are as follows:

EIA should be undertaken at the stage of “principal decision” (outline) not “implementing decision” (reserved matters).

However, where outline consent is granted without EIA, there is the risk of a need for EIA, for whole project, at reserved matters stage.

Where outline consent is granted with EIA, a second EIA may be required at reserved matters if a significantly different scheme is proposed or there are significantly new baseline conditions.

Changes to Regulations and Circulars are required. In the meantime the EIA Directive takes precedence as it has a ‘direct effect’ on UK law.


Beamo

[1man1desk]

All quotes posted by Unit of 1:

quote:Easy I dont think its easy –somewhere along the line the public are supposed to be involved for some totally unfathomable reason

You are dead right - EIA is not easy, it is difficult and very complicated.

The public are supposed to be involved, but the UK regulations are very weak on this. The main requirement under the T&CP EIA regs is for the local authority to consult the public before making their decision, rather than the developer. Recent changes in the regulations may strengthen the obligations of the actual proposer of the development in this respect.

Public consultation can mean not much more than a small ad in the local paper saying that an application has been made, and where the documentation is available, or it can include writing to specific members of the public who live nearby. More Rolls-Royce type consultations can involve a series of exhibitions, questionnaire surveys, information on websites, VR simulations, etc. These take months to prepare and to analyse the results and cost more than a large archaeological excavation. They do occur - I have taken part in two in the last year, and I am about to be involved in a third.

quote:Article 2:2. The environmental impact assessment may be integrated into the existing procedures for consent to projects in the Member States, or failing this, into other procedures or into procedures to be established to comply with the aims of this Directive.

Absolutely - the 'existing procedures' for over 90% of EIA cases are the planning consent procedures.

quote:I suppose a question could be: can a development be refused consent because of the EIA or can a development be granted acceptance in spite of an EIA. Do both cases need a judgement and how and who is the judge

Both are true. The authority can refuse consent either because the content of the EIA does not satisfy them that the development would be in accord with planning polidy, or because the developer has refused to do the EIA at all. If the EIA is inadequate, they can send it back and ask the developer to do additional work before they consider the application.
All successful planning applications with an EIA could be said to be granted 'in spite' of the EIA, because it would be very unusual for no significant environmental impacts to be identified. The authority has to decide on a case-by-case basis what weight to give those impacts in their decision-making, when balanced against other material factors. They might have to decide, for instance, whether a minor impact on archaeological remains is more important than permitting a development that would create 500 jobs in a depressed area.

quote:Now how does this relate to the Drs pipelines which seem to do the consent and EIA in one go and objections dont seem to go to public inquires where as road schemes and TCPA and others do

Pipelines can and sometimes do go to Public Inquiries, while not all trunk road schemes and only a minority of planning schemes go to Public Inquiry (non-trunk roads are dealt with as planning schemes).

1man1desk

to let, fully furnished

[Unitof1]

I think that I may as well get this off my chest before we even attempt to get beyond Article 2

“Easy I dont think its easy –somewhere along the line the public are supposed to be involved for some totally unfathomable reason”

Public* Participation in Decision-making (Arrhus convention)

Something the Dr might be coming to find in his village has been sorted by some “archaeologist” who does lots of EIAs every year.

Now EIAs are a “3%” of planning events but they have bypassed the local incompetence’s and they are awash with consultants who dont name archaeologists in their specs (this comes as a surprise to me). In many cases if they lead to “archaeology” the rag tab that will turn up will once left never appear again. Why -they seem to like it that way(and that includes the diggers-not as innocent as they look). Do they think that the local archaeologist might be trouble. Dr I hope that you haven’t upset anybody (PS it is not my intention to upset any one much)

*Article 6:3 (sorry we jumped a bit but what the hell)

3. The detailed arrangements for such information and consultation shall be
determined by the Member States, which may in particular, depending on the particular characteristics of the projects or sites concerned:
- determine the PUBLIC CONCERNED,
- specify the places where the information can be consulted,
- specify the way in which the public may be informed, for example by bill-posting within a certain radius, publication in local newspapers, organization of exhibitions with plans, drawings, tables, graphs, models,
- determine the manner in which the public is to be consulted, for example, by written
submissions, by public enquiry,
- fix appropriate time limits for the various stages of the procedure in order to ensure that a decision is taken within a reasonable period.

(all very patronising)

determine the PUBLIC CONCERNED – now there’s away to exclude most of the public