Sustainability Appraisal
Under European and national law we have to carry out a sustainability appraisal of all our new minerals and waste development documents. This will be used to help identify the main environmental, social and economic concerns that need to be addressed and to assess the likely impacts of our future policies. This work will be done in stages as we progress each policy document. The first stage is a scoping exercise with the help of government agencies such as the Environment Agency, Natural England and English Heritage as well as local stakeholders. This will establish the detailed objectives that will be used to assess each policy document. It will also help to identify local indicators and targets to enable us to carry out regular monitoring.
Further stages in the appraisal will be used to test specific options, individual policies and any possible site allocations that are put forward. How this has affected our decisions will be set out in a detailed Sustainability Report, which will be made public.
To help make this appraisal process as objective as possible we are using independent consultants to advise on, and verify, the work we are doing.
