An overview of UK practice to date - Introduction to Environmental Impact Assessment - page 240

8.5.2 Post-submission consultation and public participation
Competent authorities generally rely heavily on statutory and non-statutory consultees to
review the different elements of an EIS, and in most cases the comments received are
“substantial or very substantial” (Kobus & Lee 1993). More recent evidence (Kreuser &
Hammersley 1999) confirms that planning officers continue to “place great reliance on
the consultees to review, verify and summarise at least parts of ESs”. Where the EIS
contains insufficient information about a specific environmental component, competent
authorities often put the developer and consultee in direct contact with each other rather
than formally require further information themselves (DoE 1996).
Although there were early problems when EISs were not sent to the consultees (DoE
1991, Lee & Brown 1992), these seem to have mostly been ironed out (Jones 1995). In
particular, EN and the Countryside Agency seem to participate quite actively at this stage
of EIA, as well as local interest groups. However, some LPAs are not consulting all
statutory consultees despite regulatory requirements to do so, possibly because they feel
that a proposed project does not affect their area of interest (Pritchard et al. 1995). The
Environment Agency also has little reason to carry out extensive consultation as part of
the EIS process:
HMIP, the NRA and the waste regulatory authorities (which have since
been merged to form the Environment Agency) require impact
assessments to be supplied with pollution permit applications. Therefore
in their role as statutory planning EIS consultees, HMIP and the NRA are
unlikely to waste time complaining about the poorly detailed designs
given in a planning EIS, if they will be receiving another type of EIA
document which precisely covers their area of concern. The Didcot B case
study showed that even though HMIP considered the EIS to be
satisfactory, they later demanded major design changes. (In the case of the
Hamilton Oil gas terminal project in Liverpool Bay) HMIP raised no
objectives to the EIS, but then rejected the IPC authorization on the
grounds that design neither met the requirements of BATNEEC nor
represented the BPEO. (Bird 1996)
This problem of duplicate authorization procedures and the issues relating to discussion
between EIA participants will be discussed further in case studies in Chapter 9. The CEC
(1993) feels that the UK situation:
is satisfactory concerning the publication of ESs and their availability for
consultation once they have been submitted. Copies can, in most cases, be
obtained from either the developer or the competent authority concerned.
Where the information was available to the EIA Centre, just under half of
290 ESs were available free of charge, with 18% available for purchase at
£20 or less, and the remaining 33% available at more than £20. In most
cases copies of ESs are available, particularly in the specific locality
where an application for consent is submitted. However, in a few cases