The Environmental Impact Assessment Directive - on the implementation and application of the EIA Directive in the United Kingdom

Environmental Assessment is an assessment of the likely effects a project might have on the environment. The purpose of the assessment is to ensure that decision-makers consider environmental impacts before deciding whether to grant permission to new projects. The method originated in the United States in the 1960s and it can be defined as the process of identifying, predicting, evaluating and mitigating the biophysical, social and other relevant effects of development proposals prior to major decisions being taken and commitments made. Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is a policy and management tool for both planning and decision making. It assists to identify, predict and evaluate the foreseeable environmental consequences of proposed development projects, plans and policies. EC Directive 85/337/EEC or the EIA Directive was agreed on in 1985 and required Member States of the European Community to achieve formal compliance by July 1988. The Directive sought to ensure that, before a development consent decision is taken, a minimum level of information describing the potential significant effects on the environment of certain development projects is supplied both to the relevant competent authority and to the public. The original Directive comprised fourteen articles which outlined the minimum procedural requirements for EIA along with Annex I and II that listed categories of projects that might be subject to assessment. This thesis describes the EIA Directive together with its related pieces of legislation and the relevant case law. The thesis also aims to investigate how well the EIA Directive has been implemented and applied in the United Kingdom with focus on England and Wales. I have written my thesis together with a newly founded Swedish company, Minesto that have invented a unique tidal turbine which generates energy through the tidal streams and currents. Minesto's primal target market is the UK, hence my choice of focusing on this EU Member State. Using Minesto and their ''Deep Green''-project as a practical example, I will show how the EIA works in practise in the UK. However, since an EIA procedure is very lengthy and complicated, I will only briefly make the attempt to make an outline of the basic steps and measures needed to be taken by Minesto. The procedural implementation of the EIA Directive in the UK was initially made through secondary legislation under section 2(2) of the European Communities Act 1972. The introduction of the Town and Country Planning Regulations aimed to incorporate the requirements of the Directive but several project types was not included in the planning system and as a result, the EIA Directive was implemented in the UK by a set of over forty different regulations. Since it would be impossible for me to describe the UK EIA system as a whole, Minesto have proven a great way for me to focus on some pieces of legislation that I have deemed to be most important