Assessing The Assessments: British Planning Authorities And The Review Of Environmental Statements

For environment assessments to provide a positive contribution to official decision making in planning, the resulting environmental statement (ES) needs to exhibit such qualities as veracity, completeness and understandability; therefore the planning authority should "review" the ES to establish whether this is indeed the case and then move on to utilising the information contained therein. This research surveyed a sample of British local planning authorities to discover how they "assess the assessments" and use the information supplied. The literature suggests that planners use the "statutory consultation" system to achieve many aspects of a review, and therefore, a sample of consultees was asked about their treatment of ESs. From the surveys, it is clear that planners do in fact place great reliance on the consultees to review, verify and summarise at least parts of ESs. However there is some mismatch between the expectations of consultee review on the part of planners against the objectives of the consultees themselves. This then throws into question how useful the information is in the actual decision making processes. The paper goes on to examine the alternatives available for reviews and proposes the development of an independent review body which can ensure that ESs are "fit for purpose".