Participation, presentation and review - Introduction to Environmental Impact Assessment - page 177

requests for development consent. To this end, Member States shall
designate the authorities to be consulted… The information
gathered…shall be forwarded to those authorities. Detailed arrangements
for consultation shall be laid down by Member States.
In the UK, different statutory consultees have been designated for different types of
development. For planning projects, for instance, the statutory consultees are any
principal council to the area in which the land is situated (if not the LPA), the
Countryside Agency or the Countryside Council for Wales, the Environment Agency, the
Secretary of State for Wales (where the land is in Wales) and any body the LPA would be
required to consult under Article 10 of the T&CP (General Development Procedures)
Order 1995, for instance, the local highways authority if the project is likely to affect the
road network.
In terms of best (but not mandatory) practice, the consultees should already have been
consulted at the scoping stage. In addition, it is a legal requirement that the consultees
should be consulted before a decision is made. Once the EIS is completed, copies can be
sent to the consultees directly by the developer or by the competent authority. In practice,
many competent authorities only send particular EIS chapters to the consultees, e.g. the
chapter on archaeology to the archaeologist. However, this often limits the consultee's
understanding of the project context and wider impacts; generally consultees should be
sent a copy of the entire EIS.
6.4 EIA presentation
Although the EIA regulations specify the minimum contents required in an EIS, they do
not give any standard for the presentation of this information. Past EISs have ranged from
a three-page typed and stapled report to glossy brochures with computer graphics and
multi-volume documents in purpose-designed binders. This section discusses the
contents, organization, clarity of communication and presentation of an EIS.
6.4.1 Contents and organization
An EIS should be comprehensive. Its contents must at least fulfil the requirements of the
relevant EIA legislation. As we shall discuss in Chapter 8, past EISs have not all fulfilled
these requirements; however, the situation is improving rapidly, and LPAs are
increasingly likely to require information on topics they feel have not been adequately
discussed in an EIS. A good EIS will also go further than the minimum requirements if
other significant impacts are identified. Most EISs are broadly organized into four
sections: a non-technical summary, a discussion of relevant methods and issues, a
description of the project and of the environmental baseline conditions, and a discussion
of likely environmental impacts (which may include a discussion of baseline
environmental conditions and predicted impacts, proposed mitigation measures and
residual impacts). Ideally, an EIS should also include the main alternatives considered,
and proposals for monitoring. It could include much or all of the information given in