LGA criticises omission of population health considerations in proposed environmental assessment reforms
The Local Government Association (LGA) has said the Government "must reconsider" and include population health as a consideration in Environmental Outcomes Reports (EORs) that it plans to replace Strategic Environmental Assessments and Environmental Impact Assessments with.
The LGA made the warning in its response to the Government's consultation on the implementation of EORs, which closed last week (9 June).
It said that it shares the concerns raised by the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) that EORs, "unlike the current Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), omit considerations of population health".
The response added: "This implies that human wellbeing is a separate issue to environmental quality, contradicting the overwhelming evidence (Health and the Natural Environment: a review of evidence, policy, practice and opportunities for the future (2018) Defra, European Centre for Environment and Human Health and University of Exeter Medical School) that the environments in which we live are inextricably linked to our health across the life course in complex and systemic ways.
"The Government must reconsider and include population health considerations as part of EOR's."
The LGA also emphasised that it hopes the simplification of the impact assessment process does not tilt the balance away from consideration of complex ecological interactions.
"Given increasingly more frequent and intense extreme weather events and ongoing issues with flooding, water scarcity and nutrient neutrality in particular, there is a need to look more closely than ever before at the cumulative effects of changing land-use," it stated.
The response also noted that the consultation did not contain the level of detail required to understand how EORs will work in practice.
Along these lines, the response said that the Government must set out plainly how other assessments and regimes it intends to implement alongside the EORs - such as changes to the environmental regime including Biodiversity Net Gain, Land Use Frameworks and Local Nature Recovery Strategies - will be mainstreamed within the planning framework in order to effectively achieve the desired environmental outcomes.
It also called for more funding to be made available to local authorities in order to handle the additional burdens.
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities launched its consultation in March.
Under the proposed changes, the Government said it hopes to bring forward a new domestic framework for all the environmental assessment regimes, which originate from the EU Environmental Impact Assessment Directive (EIA) and Environmental Assessment of Plans and Programmes (Strategic Environmental Assessment or SEA) Directive.
Adam Carey
