Environmental Impact in UK Law

The Defendant's written statement summarised the Defendant's assessment and conclusions, expressly referring to air quality, traffic, and cumulative impact. He concluded, in the final paragraph, that there would be an impact from an increase in traffic in the locality. He took into account, as he was entitled to do, that the Site was not in a designated area nor was it an AQMA. He concluded that the impact from the increase in traffic would not have significant environmental effects.

This directive was adopted to protect the environment throughout the European Union by requiring Member States to ensure that planning decisions likely to have a significant environmental effect were taken only after a proper assessment of what those effects were likely to be. It requires that before the grant of "development consent" for specified kinds of project, Member States should ensure that an environmental impact assessment is undertaken.

The principle in this and similar cases seems to me to be clear: the Directive does not apply to decisions which involve merely the detailed regulation of activities for which the principal consent, raising the substantial environmental issues, has already been given. But the procedure was nevertheless a new and freestanding examination of the issues and could therefore, in my opinion, require the information provided by an environmental impact assessment.

But the question whether a project is likely to have significant effect on the environment is one of degree which calls for the exercise of judgment. Thus, remedial measures contemplated by conditions and/or undertakings can be taken into account to a certain extent (see Gillespie). Significance in this context is not a hard-edged concept: as I have said, the assessment of what is significant involves the exercise of judgment.

As the judge said, the uncertainties may or may not make it impossible reasonably to conclude that there is no likelihood of significant environmental effect. It is possible in principle to have sufficient information to enable a decision reasonably to be made as to the likelihood of significant environmental effects even if certain details are not known and further surveys are to be undertaken.

The application for planning permission did not include any development at Knapton. Paragraph 122 of the National Planning Policy Framework ("NPPF") advises planning authorities that they should focus on whether the development is an acceptable use of land, rather than on control of processes or emissions where these are subject to approval under pollution control regimes, and it should be assumed that those regimes will operate effectively.

It is not appropriate for a person charged with making a screening opinion to start from the premise that although there may be significant impacts, these can be reduced to insignificance as a result of the implementation of conditions of various kinds. The appropriate course in such a case is to require an environmental statement setting out the significant impacts and the measures which it is said will reduce their significance.