An overview of UK practice to date - Introduction to Environmental Impact Assessment - page 229

Ecological impacts 32 31

Emissions 31 31

Landscape impacts 26 35

Cumulative impacts 20 26

Economic impacts 6 24

Social impacts 5 22

Controversy/concern 9 16

Risk of accidents 5 10

Other 3 1

( Source: IAU 2003.)

in the screening decision, they are often conditioned by professional judgement. In other
words, in themselves, they do not provide sufficient justification for a screening decision
(Weston 2000); as stated in Circular 02/99, “The fundamental test to be applied in each
case is whether that particular type of development and its specific impacts are likely, in
that particular location, to result in significant effects on the environment” (DETR
1999b).
Finally, EIA in the UK is an all-or-nothing process: either an EIA is needed or it is
not. This is in contrast with some other countries (e.g. Peru and China, Chapter 10),
where a brief environmental study is carried out to determine whether a full-scale EIA is
needed. In the UK, where the provision of environmental information with planning
applications was the norm before the implementation of Directive 85/337, many
developers still voluntarily submit environmental documents without specifying whether
these are EISs or not. Some competent authorities treat these documents as EISs, with the
attendant requirements for consultation and publicity, but in other cases they simply treat
them as additional information (Hughes & Wood 1996).

8.3.2 Scoping and pre-submission consultation
Competent authorities also have much discretion to determine the scope of EIAs. As we
discussed in Chapter 3, the original Directive 85/33 7's Annex III was interpreted in UK
legislation as being in part mandatory and in part discretionary. Table 8.3 shows the type
of information included in early EISs, based on a survey of 100 EISs prepared before
1990 (Jones et al. 1991). It shows that although the mandatory