The Draft Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) Regulations 2010 are proposed to consolidate with amendments the provisions of the Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) (England and Wales) Regulations 1999 (“the 1999 Regulations”) and subsequent amending instruments. The 1999 Regulations consolidated and updated earlier instruments which implemented the Council Directive on the assessment of the effects of certain public and private projects on the environment (a).
These Regulations include provisions in relation to projects serving national defence purposes in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but apart from those provisions these Regulations apply in relation to England only. They also include provisions regarding the application of these Regulations to the Crown, which are similar to the provisions in article 22 of the Town and Country Planning (Application of Subordinate Legislation to the Crown) Order 2006 (“the 2006 ), which modified the 1999 Regulations. Article 22 of the 2006 Order is consequently revoked.
The main changes to the 1999 Regulations are:
- a limitation to the requirement for subsequent applications to be subject to the screening process to those cases where the development in question is likely to have significant effects on the environment which were not identified at the time that the initial planning permission was granted (regulation 8).
- a requirement for the reasons for negative screening decisions to be provided in writing and placed on Part 1 of the Register, to be available for public inspection (regulation 4(5) and (7)).
- an amendment to the height threshold at which screening is required for wind farms, to those where the total height of any turbine (including the rotor blade) exceeds 18 metres (Schedule 2(3)(i)).
- the inclusion of sites for the geological storage of carbon dioxide in Schedule 1(22) and installations for the capture of carbon dioxide streams for the purposes of geological storage in Schedule 2(3)(j). These amendments are required by the Directive on the Geological Storage of Carbon Dioxide (Directive 2009/31/EC).
- an amendment to the provisions relating to changes or extensions to existing development, so that the effects of the development as a whole once modified are considered (Schedule 2(13)).
There are transitional provisions (regulation 43) and consequential amendments to a number of instruments (regulation 44 and Schedule 6).
