Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution

Please find attached a copy of TRL's observations upon the scope of the RCEP study of Environmental Planning. This is a very timely and hopefully ground-breaking investigation that hopefully would be directed towards a radical shake-up of the current procedures and practice which are far from ideal.

We would be more than happy to provide further evidence to the Commission should they wish to explore any of the points we have raised.

A further difficulty is the incremental approach to revising both environmental and planning legislation. Perhaps the point is emerging when a total review resulting in an entirely new legislative basis along the lines of that taken in New Zealand would be beneficial.

As environmental assessment and management practices are becoming more widespread in both industry and land use planning, so the weaknesses of the current systems are becoming more apparent. Planners deal with increasingly scientific/technocratic environmental studies of development projects. Unfortunately, as a profession, they are seldom able to properly address such information to achieve conversion into sound environmental management actions. As noted above, this is partly due to their lack of scientific training and partly due to the lack of administrative levers.

As post-hoc environmental assessments of development plans illustrate, the integrated or holistic view is somewhat weak. With the forthcoming Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive, these weaknesses will be increasingly exposed at the policy, plan and programme level. Progress with the forthcoming Multi-Modal transportation studies, in which TRL is heavily involved, will reveal further difficulties in linking land use planning and transportation policies and programmes. For these reasons, the RCEP study is very timely.

There are numerous areas that should be examined. The key ones are summarised below.

• Environmental Targets: Lack of integration into planning/environmental policy documentation;
  
• Data Sets: Lack of regional data sets and high degree of variability in quality.
  
• Planning/Policy Documentation: The increasing variety of statutory and non-statutory planning/environmental policy guidance needs to be reviewed in order to provide for greater consolidation and to minimise the risk of conflicting objectives and confusion for the users of the various planning/environmental procedures. Equally, the diverse character of environmental policy documentation such as Biodiversity Action Plans, Local Environment Action Plans, etc needs rationalisation with the provision of a unified regional framework. The current Environment Agency LEAPs do not meet the wider user needs and a radical overhaul is needed, a point recognised by the Agency. For instance regional air quality and water mapping in a similar manner to the English Nature/Countryside Commission character mapping would be valuable.
  
• Public Involvement: A considerable deficit exists with some planning authorities following a traditionalist/minimalist approach while others are pioneering public consultation exercises in environmental planning. Equally, access to environmental data held by the environment agencies can prove to be problematic.
  
• Environment Agency: Having reviewed the EA policy frameworks, there are many weakness in their policies or rather lack of policies which compounds the high levels of officer discretion in responding to development proposals with resultant inconsistencies for developers to respond to.
  
• Local Agenda 21: High levels of variability exist in how local government is tackling this area and the extent to which it becomes an initiative driven by the public. A review of the Northamptonshire and Newcastle Agenda 21 initiatives would illustrate the diverse levels of commitment.
  
• Transparency: A comparative review of Canadian, Dutch and American practices in transparent decision making on environmental affairs would reveal how much more is to be achieved in the UK.
  
• National versus Local Interests: The conflict between national environmental requirements, e.g. waste to energy plants etc, and local public perceptions needs resolution.
  
• Conflicting Legislation: The current waste licensing and planning systems are impeding greater use of secondary aggregates by additional bureaucracy associated with the use of secondary materials, particularly associated with the definition of waste creating greater uncertainties and costs over that associated with the use of primary aggregates. Examine the position of slurried chalk excavated from CTRL and its disposal as a waste and import of virgin materials with the resulting transportation costs etc. This area should be examined prior to any introduction of an aggregates tax.
  
• Environmental Impact Assessment: It remains too much of a "bolt-on" extra rather than an, integrated part of plan and project development (examine the M6 Widening J11-16 for total design). Examine Newhey Quarry IDO Environmental Statement in Rochdale MBC for an un-cooperative developer. All agencies are poor at providing effective advice during scoping stage. The exercise is too technocratic with insufficient public involvement particularly at the scoping stage. There is a lack of a national repository or index of E1Ss and more importantly the data sets that are assembled are lost. There is no learning from past experience and no quality control. The links between the EIS and DBFO projects should be examined, as should the links between E1Ss, planning conditions and performance at Public Inquiries.
  
• Strategic Environmental Assessment: The forthcoming Directive in focusing upon plans and programmes raises many issues that should be explored. Key issues to be explored in relation to environmental planning are those of cumulative effects assessment, remote mitigation/compensation measures, as well as the issues associated with the establishment of objectives, indicators and targets that carry credibility with the public.
  
• Environmental Management Systems: In recent years there has been an expansion in the use of construction codes of practice and environmental management systems prepared for development projects. While those responsible organisations see benefits from reduced environmental liabilities, others see such systems as an unnecessary cost. Consequently there is a need for further incentives. This could be provided by fighting the regulatory burden for those shown to be acting responsibly, by providing fast track and flexible permitting systems that reduce uncertainty and improve decision making timescales.
  
• Monitoring and Post Development Audits: The systems do not support on-going improvements to either procedures or individual project management. A system that facilitates revision of consents on the basis of post-development audits is needed. Examination of the Dutch system and early UK research in 1980s is needed. The Regional Planning Guidance system and Local Transport Plans both call for monitoring and feedback systems, yet it is doubted that the mechanisms are available to deliver such information.
  
• Designation Mentality: Too much focus is given to protected areas making the environment a black and white issue rather than shades of grey. Greater attention should be given to local and regional environmental vulnerability mapping, the Environmental Capital approach may aid this process.
  
• Acoustic Measurement Scales: The changes in EU noise policy following the recent Green Paper "Future Noise Policy" EC Green Paper, COM(96) 540 final, 1996 and the outputs of the various Working Groups set up by the European Commission to harmonize the methods of assessing, predicting, and measuring the noise from all modes of transport is an area which TRL is closely involved. This has led to the conclusion that there is a need to develop a standard noise index for all forms of noise sources. Although air, rail and industrial sources can be assessed on the LAeq scale, road traffic noise uses the LA 10 scale which can only strictly be converted to LAeq for a limited range of traffic conditions. Hence there is a need to provide guidance in assessing the noise from mixed sources i.e. planning residential development near to existing road and rail links.

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