An overview of UK practice to date - Introduction to Environmental Impact Assessment - page 241

copies of ESs are only available for consultation, but not for purchase by
the public.

In general, however, public participation in the UK EIA system is often very partial,
limited to a short period following EIS submission. The public concerned is not defined,
and notice of an EIS is only given locally (CEC 2003). For other wider aspects of public
consultation and participation, the reader is referred to Section 6.2.

8.5.3 Decision-makmg
As we noted in Chapter 1, one of the main purposes of EIA is to help to make better
decisions, and it is therefore important to assess the performance of EIA to date in
relation to this purpose. It is also important to remember that all decisions involve trade-
offs. Wood (2003) identifies some of these, including trade-offs in the EIA process
between simplification and complexity, urgency and the need for better information, facts
and values, forecasts and evaluation, and certainty and uncertainty. There are also trade-
offs of a more substantive nature, in particular between the socio-economic and
biophysical impacts of projects—sometimes reduced to the “jobs vs. the environment”
dilemma. Box 8.1 illustrates the trade-off issue in relation

Box 8.1 Socio-economic and biophysical impact trade-offs—the
example of Newbury Bypass, UK

MIXED FEELINGS GREET GO-AHEAD TO NEWBURY
The Government's shock decision to approve the A34 Newbury Bypass
has been greeted with relief by district and county planners, who feel that
traffic congestion is paralysing the Berkshire town. Environmental
campaigners, however, have reacted angrily to ex-transport secretary
Brian Mawhinney's announcement last Wednesday—his final one before
being replaced by Sir George Young. Protests on a similar scale to those
at Twyford Down are now expected at the site, where construction work
could begin before the end of the year.
Last December, Mawhinney said he would delay any decision on the
controversial proposal for a year to consider alternatives, and his sudden
announcement took both local authorities and environmentalists by
surprise. “I had no doubt that the current situation on the A34 was
intolerable and that there was strong economic justification for a bypass”
he explained. “But I wanted to be sure of the environmental balance
between the principal route alternatives and to confirm that the route
proposed was the best solution to the problems of congestion in
Newbury.”
Peter Gilmour, community officer at Newbury Borough Council, called
the decision “a triumph for common sense and local democracy”. Council
planning officers and members had backed the scheme “root and branch”,
he said while 13 000 of the town's 27 000 population had signed a