Monitoring and auditing: after the decision - Introduction to Environmental Impact Assessment - page 207

The highest priority in the study has been to identify the impacts of the development
on local employment; this emphasis reflects the pivotal role of employment impacts in
the generation of other local impacts, particularly accommodation and local services. In
addition to providing an updated and improved database to inform future assessments,
assisting project management of the Sizewell B project in the local community and
auditing impact predictions, the study also monitored and audited some of the conditions
and undertakings associated with permission to proceed with the construction of the
power station. These included undertakings on the use of rail and the routeing of road
construction traffic, as well as conditions on the use of local labour and local firms, local
liaison arrangements and (trafftc) noise (DoEn 1986).
The monitoring study included the collection of a range of information, including
statistical data (e.g. the mixture of local and non-local construction-stage workers, the
housing tenure status and expenditure patterns of workers), decisions, opinions and
perceptions of impacts. The spatial scope of the study extended to the commuting zone
for construction workers (Figure 7.4). The study included information from the developer
and the main contractors on site, from the relevant local authorities and other public
agencies, from the local community and from the construction workers. The local upper-
school Geography A-level students helped to collect data on the local perceptions of
impacts via biennial questionnaire surveys in the town of Leiston, which is adjacent to
the construction site. A major survey of the socio-economic characteristics and activities
of a 20 per cent sample of the project workforce was also carried out every 2 years. The
IAU team operated as the catalyst to bring the data together. There was a high level of
support for the study, and the results are openly available in published annual monitoring
reports and in summary broadsheets, which are available free to the local community
(Glasson et al. 1989-97).
The study has highlighted a number of methodological difficulties with monitoring
and auditing . The first relates to the disaggregation of projeeterelated impacts from
baseline trends. Data are available that indicate local trends in a namber of variables, such
as unemployment levels, traffic volumes and crime levels. But problems are encountered
when we attempt to explain these local trends. To what extent are they due to (a) the
construction project itself, (b) national and regional factors or (c) other local changes
independent of the construction project? It is straightforward to isolate the role of
national and regional factors, but the relative roles of the construction project and other
local changes are very difficult to determine. “Controls” are used where possible to
isolate the project-related impacts.
A second problem relates to the identification of the indirect, knock-on effects of a
construction project. Indirect impacts—particularly on employment—may well be
significant, but they are not easily observed or measured. For example, indirect
employment effects may result from the replacement of employees leaving local
employment to take up work on site. Are these local recruits replaced by their previous
employers? If so, do these replacements come from other local employees, the local
unemployed or in-migrant workers? It was feasible to obtain this sort of information.