DRAFT Sustainability Appraisal Report for the Emerging Local Plan ...

Section 16.
Introduction
Conclusions
16.1 As required by legislation, this SAR presents how the SEA assessment (see Appendix 4) and
the SA appraisals (see Appendix 3) has been applied and carried out for the production of
Runnymede Borough Councils Local Plan. It documents this process that commenced
production in 2004. Both SA and SEA has been carried by in‐house by the Council’s impact
assessment, policy and environmental health teams. This cross departmental working
arrangement has provided the means of embedding the considerations of environmental,
social, and economic impacts on a number of receptors and objectives as a result of
implementing its plan into the Council. By doing so the Council has met the primary objective
of both sustainable development practice and Article 1 of the SEA Directive with states that;
“The objective of this Directive [SEA Directive] is to provide for a
high level of protection of the environment and to contribute to the
integration of environmental considerations into the preparation
and adoption of plans and programmes with a view to promoting
sustainable development… (Emphasis added)’
16.2 The process has neither been straightforward, nor simple and the main issue related to the
fact that both plan and assessment/appraisal practice emerged around the same time ‐ 2004.
The process was further complicated due to an extremely long timeframe involved in the
production of the Local Plan 2004 ‐ 2013; the inevitable lack of clarity inherent within
emerging preliminary drafts policies, coupled with a general lack of quantitative data to carry
out the assessments resulted in a largely qualitative approach being employed. Issues around
data and plan uncertainty and the risks associated are discussed in more detail in Sections 17
and 18 below.
16.3 The overall conclusions of both the SEA and SA of the Local Plan are now considered in the
remainder of this section.
Local Plan Policy Context Conclusion
16.4 Preliminary analysis of the strategic fit the Local Plan has with the wider context of
sustainable development policy (Table 13) indicates that the proposed plan had the potential
to contribute to a wide range of strategic goals and objectives. A more detailed analysis was
carried out within each of the 10 environmental receptors and showed that in general, the
Local Plan implicitly rather than explicitly addresses relevant sustainability objectives. This is
considered normal for such a plan at this level.
16.5 It is also worth noting that there are likely to be significant differences between the Local
Plan’s potential contributions to objectives and its actual contributions to the realisation of
broader sustainability policy goals. The Local Plan’s actual contribution will be subject to the
influences of a range of factors outside both the Council’s and Local Plan’s control, including
constantly evolving legislative and market conditions, partnership working and local
governance and resource availability.
SA Sustainability Objectives Conclusion
16.6 The Local Plan was subjected to a total of a 1,025 individual appraisals in respect of its SA.
The output of these assessments are summarised in Appendix 3. Overall, and mindful of the
caveat outlined in paragraph 16.9 and 16.10 below, the accepted Local Plan policies are
considered to be slightly more beneficial than adverse. This conclusion implies that
implementation of the Local Plan would neither ‘trail blaze’ the achievement of the
sustainable development objectives as set out in Table 5, nor significantly adversely affect the
environmental receptors considered by the SEA.
16.7 The slight difference in the overall conclusions of the SEA (neutral) and SA (beneficial) for the
accepted policies is considered to be as a result of the fact that the SA includes wider
consideration of social and economic objectives, were as the SEA largely considers
environmental receptors (see Figure 4).
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