Sustainability Appraisal

What is a Sustainability Appraisal?

A Sustainability Appraisal helps the Council to determine the best development policies for Herefordshire by ensuring that the principles of "sustainable development" are taken into account. Sustainable development literally means that any changes made to Herefordshire must be sustainable - they should not provide an improved quality of life for today's citizens at the expense of future generations. One way of helping to ensure this is to weigh up environmental, social and economic concerns of a proposal or a policy against a set of sustainability objectives. Assessing the impact of planning policies in terms of these three themes using a set of objectives is known as a Sustainability Appraisal.

Why do Sustainability Appraisals?

Carrying out a Sustainability Appraisal is immensely beneficial to the policy process as it is a means of identifying and addressing any adverse effects that draft policies and proposals may have and any improvement opportunities that may be appropriate. It is a statutory stage (meaning that it must be carried out by law) in the production of most documents produced for the Local Development Framework (LDF) including development plan documents (DPDs) and supplementary planning documents (SPDs). The appraisal is carried out in line with guidance at both the European level (known as the "Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive, 2001", or SEA Directive for short) and at the national level (set out in the document "Sustainability Appraisals of Regional Spatial Strategies and Local Development Frameworks" ODPM 2005).

The Sustainability Appraisal also provides a good opportunity for interested parties to get involved in local policy-making at an early stage - to ensure that the Council takes into account all sustainability issues and thoroughly considers all impacts of development policies.

What stages are there in the Sustainability Appraisal process?

1. Scoping Report Stage

   The first priority for the Council is to agree on the objectives for Herefordshire in terms of sustainability. This is important in order to create a "Framework" against which policy options will be measured. The objectives can be determined through the collection of "base-line" data, which tells us what sustainability issues already exist in the County and thus provides the context upon which to base our aims and objectives. It is also necessary to look into any other policy or objectives at the national and regional level and take these into account. The Framework of objectives is used to measure policy development at every stage of the process in preparing documents for the LDF.

   This first stage of preparing an overarching Scoping Report for the LDF, containing a framework of objectives is now complete. You can see a copy of the General Scoping Report by clicking in the Resources Box below.

   In some cases, this General Scoping Report may not provide sufficient information in relation to the scope and level of detail required for an individual document's sustainability appraisal. If this is the case, then an additional Subsidiary Sustainability Appraisal Scoping Report, appropriate to the document in question, will be produced and will be made available on the Council's web page alongside the relevant initial consultation document.

2. Draft Sustainability Appraisal Report Stage.

   The next stage in the Sustainability Appraisal process involves further, more detailed work to develop and refine policy options and identify the impacts of putting into practice the preferred policy options in a DPD or SPD. The Developing Options Paper Sustainability Appraisal can be viewed on the Core Strategy pages.

   The findings of this work will be presented in a draft Final Sustainability Report alongside the Draft DPD (Preferred Options) or SPD being produced. The report is called a draft Final Sustainability Report because changes can be made to its contents following a formal 6-week period of public consultation. This report also looks at how the impacts of preferred options can be reduced - sometimes called 'mitigation'.

3. Preparing the Final Report and Monitoring stage.

   The Council will take into account any comments received and revise the Final Sustainability Report before it is formally submitted to the Secretary of State. After adoption, the effects of putting the plan or proposal into practice will need to be monitored and any adverse effects responded to.

Resources

Executive Summary

Adobe PDF

23 kb

Sustainability Appraisal of the Herefordshire Local Development Framework - General Scoping Report

Adobe PDF

1567 kb

If you need help to understand a document, or would like it in another format or language, please call 01432 260500 or email info@herefordshire.gov.uk

 | 

Adobe offer a free Reader to view these files which can be downloaded from their website

Adobe also offer a number of Adobe PDF online conversion tools to help users access the contents of PDF documents