Digitalising Environmental Statements

Environmental Impact Assessment’s (EIA’s) are a recognised tool to identify and assess various social, economic and environmental factors that are likely to be impacted by major development.

 

As technical assessments and summaries have grown, there is an overriding consensus that documents have become too complex, particularly for the general public who may lack the technical expertise and knowledge to understand the issues involved. These cumbersome documents mean that many consider the Environmental Statement’s (ES’s) to be inaccessible.

 

This issue is not just confined to EIA’s and indeed many will have seen the news surrounding the number of document pages (359,000) involved in the Lower Thames Crossing application for a Development Consent Order.

 

Increasingly, industry voices are calling for shorter and more accessible forms of reporting, and many are utilising digitalised data reporting methods as a new way to share their information method.

 

The Institute for Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA) Impact Assessment Network has recently published “A Roadmap to Digital Environmental Assessment”. The report is a continuation of IEMA’s call for greater adoption of digital techniques set out in ‘Proportionate EIA Strategy’ (2017) and builds on the recommendations in ‘Primer for Embracing Innovation and Digital Working’ (2020). The roadmap has been produced to help IEMA’s members on their journey towards digital environmental assessment.

 

We have reviewed the Digital Environmental Statement used by National Highways, in respect of the ‘A417 Development Consent Order’ application that was granted consent in November 2022. In their own words, the digital version converted “9356 pages into an accessible and easy-to-navigate website to make it easier to access environmental information about the scheme.”

 

 

From the outset, the report is easy to navigate, with a lack of clutter and clearly identifiable labels. Compare this to opening an ES for the first time, and trying to find a particular page/chapter. Included within the pages is a ‘How To” which provides user information as to how to operate the system.

 

Each individual section is presented with a large interactive ESRI map, with relevant layers included. This enables users to interrogate the proposals at a reasonably fine level, without needing significant baseline initial information. This allows the user to very quickly understand the different constraints of the site with the high-level information provided.

 

 

As someone completely new to the proposal, or someone with a baseline understanding of planning and development, the digital tool is certainly helpful, and has advantages to the traditional ES document.

 

Notwithstanding the above dashboard, each individual section on the digital viewer is still backed up by lengthy PDF chapters on the relevant section. The outstanding question is, therefore, if the ‘digitalised’ version is effectively for aesthetic purposes only, and the large documents are still the primary method for assessing the impacts of the development, is there incentive for the applicant to provide the website display…. Furthermore, there is also the question of the role of Non-Technical Summaries; should these become digitised as well and provide greater access and understanding with the detail contained within the ES chapters…

 

It is also very important to consider the considerable evidence base in relation to ‘digital inequality’. The risk of moving purely to a digital based system potentially prohibits a proportion of the population from being able to access and meaningfully engage with consultations that they may wish to. Interactive web-based maps may require greater than ‘basic’ IT literacy, which further increases the divide. Others rightfully argue that the move to digital and innovation of the ES reporting process, better engages the otherwise un-engaged voices of young people.

 

There is still very much a balance to be found with the presentation of ES’s. With an increasing shift towards digital ES presentation, it is important to consider how the breadth of written reports can be reduced by improving functionality of the digital based reporting, while maintaining a proportionate level of reporting and assessing and maintaining environmental protection, and similarly not excluding a particular group from engagement.

 

Moreover, this is all set to change when EIA’s are eventually replaced by ‘Environmental Outcome Reports’ and there is an intention to make these more accessible and incorporate more digital data collection and presentation. However, it is unclear whether the secondary legislation or guidance will require a more digital approach or leave it to the applicants/industry to drive it forward.

 

For further information on the above or assistance with preparing an EIA please contact Tim Spicer, Alex Payne or Oli Ricketts on 01622 776226.