Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of simplifying the environmental impact assessment for new developments.

Planning for the Future sets out our intention to reform the current framework of environmental assessment. It is vital that environmental considerations are considered properly as part of the planning and development process. However, the current frameworks for doing so – which include Strategic Environmental Assessment, Sustainability Appraisal, and Environmental Impact Assessment – can lead to duplication of effort and overly-long reports which inhibit transparency and add unnecessary delays.

Reform of environmental assessment is being taken forward as part of the government’s planning reforms in order to:

• speed up decision-making and the delivery of development projects;
• simplify the requirements for environmental assessment and mitigation; and
• ensure that we take advantage of opportunities for environmental improvements.

These reforms will bring benefits across planning, including for new developments.