Sustainability Appraisal
Sustainability Appraisal and Strategic Environmental Assessment
Sustainable development is now the statutory purpose of planning. To help deliver this, and at the same time satisfy the European Directive on Strategic Environmental Assessment, the Council must subject all its new Local Development Documents to Sustainability Appraisal.
Through this process policies and documents are assessed for their social, economic and environmental impacts at various stages of plan preparation. This enables decision makers, stakeholders and members of the public to see how sustainable different options are, ensuring that they are more informed when deciding which is the most appropriate and sustainable option for the District.
In preparation for the next phase of the LDF the City Council has adopted a revised Sustainability Appraisal Scoping Report. This has been prepared on behalf of the City Council by Hyder Consultants and takes account of new information including changing baseline conditions and new and revised plans and programmes.
The revised Sustainability Appraisal Scoping Report establishes the sustainability objectives against which future planning policies will be assessed against and the key sustainability issues that future Development Plan Documents will need to address.
The Report has been prepared in consultation with Natural England, English Heritage and the Environment Agency.