An overview of UK practice to date - Introduction to Environmental Impact Assessment - page 246

8.6.1 Costs of EIA
Generally, EIA has probably slightly increased the cost to developers of obtaining
planning permission. An EIS generally costs between 0.000025 and 5 per cent of project
costs (Coles et al. 1992). Weston's (1995) survey of consultants showed that
consultancies received on average £34,000 for preparing a whole EIS, £40,000 for
several EIS sections, and £14,750 for one section: this itself highlights the variability of
the costs involved. Another study of 20 EISs showed EIS preparation to vary from 22
person-days at a cost of £5,000 to 3-4 person-months with additional work contracted out
(DoE 1996). Pritchard et al.'s (1995) study of eight EIAs found that developers felt that
“the preparation of the ES had cost them too much time and money, and that the large
amounts of work involved in EA often yielded few tangible benefits in terms of the actual
planning decision reached”. In its Consultation Paper on the amended Directive, the
DETR suggested £35,000 as an appropriate median figure for the cost of undertaking an
EIA under the new Regulations (DETR 1997b).
In terms of the delay caused to planning decisions, various studies (e.g. DoE 1991,
Lee et al. 1994, Tarling 1991) have shown that the mean time to decide planning
applications with EISs was about 40 weeks; but there were wide variations. This is
considerably more than for applications without an EIS (DoE 1996), but then the projects
with an EIS also tend to be larger, more complex and more politically sensitive. An early
study (Coles et al. 1992) found that, on average, the entire EIA process, from the
notification of intent for the project to the decision, took 62 weeks, the EIS preparation
taking 25 weeks. Although some consultants feel that EIA slows down the decision-
making process, imposes additional costs on developers and is a means through which
LPAs can make unreasonable demands on developers to provide detailed information on
issues “which are not strictly relevant to the planning decision” (Weston 1995), others
feel that EIA does not necessarily slow things down: “The more organised approach
makes it more efficient and in some cases it allows issues to be picked up earlier. The EIS
can thus speed up the system” (DoE 1996). An EIA may well shorten the planning
application stage but lengthen the period before the EIS is submitted.
There has been some concern that competition and cost-cutting by consultancies, an
increase in “cowboy” consultancies and the tendency for developers to accept the lowest
bid for preparing an EIS may affect the quality of the resulting EIAs by limiting the
consultants' time, expertise or equipment. Consultants note that “on all but the largest
developments there is always a limited budget—an EA expands to fill the available
budget, and then some” (Radcliff & Edward-Jones 1995). However, Fuller (1992) argues
that this may not be helpful to a developer in the long run:
A poor-quality statement is often a major contributory factor to delays in
the system, as additional information has to be sought on issues not
addressed, or only poorly addressed, in the original… Therefore, reducing
the cost of an environmental assessment below the level required for a
thorough job is often a false economy.