10 - Planning and Noise

Summary

The law relating to town and country planning has an important role to play in the control of noise in the environment. In this chapter we first consider environmental impact assessment, then strategic environmental assessment and thereafter, turn our attention to the control of development, under the Town and Country Planning Acts.

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is a key legal mechanism that has emerged in the last thirty-five years. It has its origins in the USA in the 1960s. There it was a response to both the growing environmental movement of that era and also, in no small measure, to the concerns about the US interstate highway system during the 1960s. EIA enables decision-makers, mainly in the form of planning authorities as far as the UK is concerned, to take account of the environmental impact of their decisions. In essence, the importance of EIA is that information, about the likely environmental impacts of certain development projects, is properly considered before a decision is taken as to whether they should proceed. EIA is a process, or procedure, that comprises a drawing-together in both a formal and systematic way of assessments of projects that are likely to have significant environmental effects. This process helps to ensure that the importance of the predicted effects, and the scope for reducing them, are properly understood not only by the public, but by the relevant competent authority before it makes its decision. The use of EIA conduces to transparency on the part of actions that are taken by decision-makers, and also increases the opportunities for the public to participate in the planning process. Since its adoption in the US National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, EIA has become an important tool of domestic environmental management world-wide.

EIA DIRECTIVE AND ITS IMPLEMENTATION IN THE UK

The European Commission's Second Action Programme on the environment, in 1977, reiterated the approach that had been expressed in the First Action Programme, namely that effects on the environment should be taken into account at the earliest possible stage in all the technical planning and decision-making processes. The UK was initially opposed to the European Commission's proposals for a Directive on EIA.