Eastleigh Borough Local Plan 2011-2036 – Sustainability Appraisal

Introduction

1.1Eastleigh Borough Council has begun preparation of a new Local Plan for the period from 2011 to 2036, following the Eastleigh Borough Local Plan 2011-2029 being found unsound at examination. The new Local Plan is reconsidering the housing requirements for Eastleigh and willrespond to the emerging review of the South Hampshire Strategy.

1.2As set out in the Local Development Scheme[1], the Eastleigh Borough Local Plan 2011-2036 will set out the overall strategy for development in the borough, giving spatial expression to the Community Strategy. It will include a Vision, Objectives and Strategic Policies, which will describe the broad distribution of new development, and other strategic principles e.g. countryside gaps between settlements. The Local Plan will define urban areas, countryside gaps and new site allocations and will include development management policies. All the policies and site allocations will be illustrated on the Ordnance Survey-based Policies Map.

1.3The first stage of consultation on the new Local Plan 2011-2036 will be the Regulation 18[2] consultation on the Draft Local Plan, which will involve stakeholder and community consultation on the issues and options for the Local Plan and the Council’s preferred approach. The consultation is anticipated to run from December 2015 to February 2016.

1.4This note describes the Sustainability Appraisal/Strategic Environmental Assessment process that is being undertaken alongside preparation of the new Local Plan.

Sustainability Appraisal and Strategic Environmental Assessment

1.5Sustainability Appraisal (SA) is a statutory requirement of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. It is designed to ensure that the plan preparation process maximises the contribution that a plan makes to sustainable development and minimises any potential adverse impacts. The SA process involves appraising the likely social, environmental and economic effects of the policies and proposals within a plan from the outset of its development.

1.6Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is also a statutory assessment process, required under the SEA Directive[3], transposed in the UK by the SEA Regulations (Statutory Instrument 2004, No 1633). The SEA Regulations require the formal assessment of plans and programmes which are likely to have significant effects on the environment and which set the framework for future consent of projects requiring Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)[4]. The purpose of SEA, as defined in Article 1 of the SEA Directive is ‘to provide for a high level of protection of the environment and to contribute to the integration of environmental considerations into the preparation and adoption of plans….with a view to promoting sustainable development’.

1.7SEA and SA are separate processes but have similar aims and objectives. Simply put, SEA focuses on the likely environmental effects of a plan whilst SA includes a wider range of considerations, extending to social and economic impacts. National Planning Practice Guidance[5] shows how it is possible to satisfy both requirements by undertaking a joint SA/SEA process, and to present an SA report that incorporates the requirements of the SEA Regulations.

1.8The SA/SEA of the Eastleigh Borough Local Plan 2011-2036 is being prepared in the spirit of this integrated approach and the abbreviation ‘SA’ should therefore be taken to refer to ‘SA incorporating the requirements of SEA’.

1.9The Planning Practice Guidance states that SA is integral to the preparation and development of a Local Plan, to identify how sustainable development is being addressed, so work should start at the same time that work starts on developing the plan.

1.10There is a list of required information (set out in the SEA Regulations) that the final SA Report should include. Some of this information starts being collected at the ‘scoping’ stage, which is the first stage in the SA process. The scoping stage of the SA involves understanding the social, economic and environmental baseline for the plan area as well as the sustainability policy context and key sustainability issues. The SA process for the Eastleigh Borough Local Plan 2011-2036 began in June 2015 with the production of a Scoping Report by Eastleigh Borough Council.

SA Scoping Report

1.11The Scoping Report included some of the requirements of the final SA Report, which will continue to be updated as necessary in the SA Reports produced at each consultation stage of the Local Plan process to ensure that they reflect the current situation in Eastleigh. The Scoping Report set out a review of policies, plans and programmes of relevance to the Local Plan and the relationships between them. Baseline information was collected on the following ‘SEA topics’: biodiversity, flora and fauna; population and human health; water; soil; air; climatic factors; material assets; cultural heritage and the landscape. Data on social and economic issues were also taken in to consideration. This baseline information provides the basis for predicting and monitoring the likely effects of the Local Plan and helps to identify alternative ways of dealing with any adverse effects identified. Drawing on the review of relevant plans, policies and programmes and the baseline information, key sustainability issues for the district were identified (including environmental problems, as required by the SEA Regulations). A Sustainability Appraisal framework was then presented, setting out the SA objectives against which options and subsequently policies will be appraised. The SA framework provides a way in which the sustainability impacts of implementing a plan can be described, analysed and compared.

1.12The Scoping Report was subject to a five week consultation periodfrom 1st July 2015 to 5th August 2015, and the responses received are beingreviewed and addressed as appropriate in the full SA Report that will accompany the Draft Local Plan consultation.

SA of Draft Local Plan

1.13Independent SA/SEA consultants (LUC) were appointed by Eastleigh Borough Council (EBC) in May 2015 to lead the SA work for the Eastleigh Borough Local Plan 2011-2036, working jointly with EBC officers from the Regeneration and Planning Policy team.

1.14After the scoping stage, the SA should be undertaken iteratively, such that as each new element of the plan is being prepared by the Council, the potential sustainability effects are identified and described, along with any recommendations for enhancing positive effects or avoiding/mitigating negative effects. This appraisal work will then get updated to reflect any changes that the Council makes to the plan before it is published for consultation, and also following consultation stages. In this way, the SA can help to inform the content of the plan at each stage of the plan-making process.

1.15In preparing the Draft Local Plan for the Regulation 18 consultation, the Council has been considering the following main options for the plan:

  • Draft Vision and Objectives – these are fundamental to the plan; no alternatives are being considered.
  • Quantum options – for how much housing needs to be delivered in the plan period.
  • Strategic Location options –individual sites assessed in the Strategic Land Availability Assessment (SLAA) have been combined into a series of Strategic Location options, some of which are capable of being developed in combination with others. The Council is focusing on large sites (i.e. capable of accommodating residential developments of 200 dwellings or more) to explore strategic spatial options / the principle of development.
  • Strategic Spatial Options –StrategicSpatial Options for where to provide the new development required have been identified by combining different Strategic Location options. Some of the Strategic Spatial Options are focused around particular locations (e.g. Expansion of Fair Oak and Bishopstoke to the north/north-east with related development in Allbrook village). In many cases, they have been proposed as a “package” by developers. Other options have been combined because of the role they can play in delivering new infrastructure.
  • Non-spatial policy options – a number of proposed policy approaches to managing new development in the Borough have also been set out in the Draft Local Plan, covering issues such as Countryside, gaps and the coast, affordable housing, retail and other town centre uses, transport, green infrastructure etc.
  • As the Council has been identifying spatial options and drafting the vision and objectives and non-spatial policy options, the LUC/EBC SA team has been appraising the options against the SA Framework, agreed at the scoping stage, with ‘scores’ being attributed to each option to indicate its likely sustainability effects on the baseline in relation to each objective.
  • As required by the SEA Regulations, the likely effects of the options need to be determined and their significance assessed, and this inevitably requires a series of judgments to be made. The SA has attempted to differentiate between the most significant effects and other more minor effects through the use of the symbols shown in Figure 1. The dividing line when making a decision about the significance of an effect is often quite small. Where either (++) or (--) has been used to distinguish significant effects from more minor effects (+ or -) this is because the effect of an option or preferred approach in relation to the SA objective in question is considered to be of such magnitude that it will have a noticeable and measurable effect, taking into account other factors that may influence the achievement of that objective. However, scores are relative to the scale of proposals under consideration.

Figure 1 Key to symbols and colour coding used in the SA of the Eastleigh Local Plan

++ / The option is likely to have a significant positiveeffect on the SA objective(s).
+ / The option is likely to have a positiveeffect on the SA objective(s).
0 / The option is likely to have a negligible or no effect on the SA objective(s).
- / The option is likely to have a negativeeffect on the SA objective(s).
-- / The option is likely to have a significant negativeeffect on the SA objective(s).
? / It is uncertain what effect the option will have on the SA objective(s), due to a lack of information.
+/- / The option is likely to have a mixture of positive and negative effects on the SA objective(s).

1.18The SA team has prepared appraisal matrices for all the different types of options being considered for the Draft Local Plan, and has provided the draft findings (and any recommendations for enhancing positive effects or avoiding/mitigating negative effects ) to the Council’s plan-makers to consider before finalising the Draft Local Plan. In this way, the SA process is helping to inform the Draft Local Plan.

1.19All of the appraisal findings will be pulled together in the full SA Report that will be available for consultees to read alongside the Draft Local Plan. The SA Report will meetall of the requirements of the SEA Regulations applicable at this stage of plan-making, and will include:

  • An outline of the Draft Local Plan.
  • A review of relevant international and national plans, policies and programmes and their sustainability objectives, along with consideration of the implications for the Local Plan and the associated SA work.
  • Up to date baseline information of relevance to the Local Plan, addressing all of the topics required by the SEA Directive.
  • Key sustainability issues and problems for Eastleigh.
  • The SA framework being used for the appraisal of the Local Plan (agreed through the Scoping stage).
  • The reasonable alternatives (i.e. options) considered, including how they performed in sustainability terms and an outline of the Council’s reasons for selecting particular options, and the reasons for rejecting others.
  • Any difficulties encountered during the appraisal process, including lack of knowledge.
  • The significant effects of the Local Plan options on achievement of each of the objectives in the SA framework, taking into account mitigation (which may take the form of policy safeguards to be included elsewhere in the plan, in national policy or other regulatory mechanisms).
  • Suggested monitoring indicators for significant effects identified (including uncertain effects where these could become significant).
  • The SA report will clearly set out the SA conclusions for the Draft Local Plan options, highlighting any likely significant effects, and recommendations for mitigating potential negative effects identified. Consideration will also be given to the likely cumulative, in-combination and synergistic effects.

1

[1]Eastleigh Borough Local Plan - Local Development Scheme. Eastleigh Borough Council, Draft April 2015.

[2]The Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations 2012. Statutory Instrument 2012 No. 767.

[3]SEA Directive 2001/42/EC

[4] Under EU Directives 2011/92/EU and 2014/52/EC concerning EIA

[5]