Environmental Impact Assessment

The environmental impact assessment of individual projects at the development consent stage has been a feature of Scots Law since 1988 when EC Directive 85/337/EEC on the assessment of the effects of certain public and private projects on the environment was first implemented in the UK. Current Scottish legislation is the Environmental Impact Assessment (Scotland) Regulations 1999.Further information can be found here.

The Directive’s main aim was to ensure that the authority giving primary consent (the ‘competent authority’) for a particular project makes its decision in the knowledge of any likely significant effects on the environment. Environmental Impact Assessment is a means of drawing together, in a systematic way, an assessment of a project's likely significant environmental effects. This helps to ensure that the importance of the predicted effects, and the scope for reducing them, are properly understood by the public, and the relevant competent authority before it makes its decision. See the Planning Circular 8/2007 [pdf, 363 kb].

There are a number of different pieces of legislation applying environmental impact assessment to specific development types e.g. harbour works, fish farms. These have been consolidated in an amendment to the Regulations. We are also consulted widely under the Electricity Works (Environmental Impact Assessment) (Scotland) Regulations 2000 where works of a certain size are subject to environmental assessment.

Guidance

The Scottish Government has published Planning Circular 8/2007 [pdf, 363 kb].which provides guidance on the environmental impact assessment process and Planning Advice Note 58 Environmental Impact Assessment provides background information and advice on good practice.

Historic Scotland's Role

We are consulted on the content of an environmental statement for our statutory interests:

• Scheduled monuments and their settings
• Category A listed buildings and their settings
• Sites on the Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes

Where requested, our comments on screening, scoping and the final environmental statement are returned to the decision-making authority. We also welcome pre-application discussions. All other historic environment matters are subject to the comments of the local authority historic environment service.