Sustainability Appraisals and Strategic Environmental Assessment

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Sustainability Appraisal (SA)

A Sustainability Appraisal (SA) is mandatory under Section 39(2) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004.

The purpose of SA is to promote sustainable development through the integration of social, environmental and economic considerations into the preparation of planning policy documents.

A key element of this is the testing of the Core Strategy policies against the SA objectives in order to identify likely positive impacts and also determine whether any negative impacts could arise.

The preparation of the SA has involved three key stages:

• the production of a Scoping Report (published in May 2008) setting out the scoping of the SA work to be carried out in relation to the Core Strategy
• the production the SA Report (November 2009) in support of the Preferred Strategy consultation
• an update of the SA Report (January 2011) in support of the Core Strategy Publication Version

Local Authorities are also required to conduct an environmental assessment in accordance with the requirements of European Directive 2001/42/EC (the Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive).  Although the requirements for carrying out SA and Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) differ, both are satisfied through the SA process.

If you have any queries regarding the Sustainability Appraisal Report, please contact the Planning Policy Team on 020 8547 5002 or email: ldf@rbk.kingston.gov.uk