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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how many environmental impact assessments his Department has made in each of the last two financial years.

Responsibility for the various stages of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process usually falls with the applicant or the local planning authority. However, the Secretary of State can either choose or be called upon to make a screening direction, which determines whether or not a certain development can be considered ‘EIA development’ and therefore subject to the EIA process.

Planning is a devolved issue and so the following figures relate to England only:

2015/16 – 78 screening directions were made, 13 determining that the development was EIA.

2016/17 – 60 screening directions made, 16 determining that the development was EIA.