planning process | european

European policy

Rights
Environmental assessment

Rights

European legislation and conventions crucially affect the rights of the public to be involved in planning decisions. For example, the Aarhus Convention which the UK has signed, ‘guarantees the rights of access to information, public participation in decision-making, and access to justice in environmental matters’. The European Human Rights Convention also affects people’s rights to property and to free expression and has been used, for example, in planning cases involving gypsies and travellers.

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Environmental assessment

A number of European Commission Directives have a direct effect on planning policy in England.. These relate to:

Protection of environmentally valuable or sensitive sites. For example, the European Council Directive 92/43/EEC of 21 May 1992 on the conservation of natural habitats and of wild fauna and flora;
Requirement to do appraisals of the environmental impact of major schemes (required in European Directive 85/33/EEC as amended by 97/11/EC);
Need to assess the effects of certain plans and programmes on the environment, (required in European Directive 2001/42/EC - download pdf 80KB);
Need for an ‘appropriate assessment’ where regional and local plans or major projects are likely to affect an environmentally sensitive site already protected under a European Directive.

Increasingly, legal challenges to planning decisions are being made on the basis that either the proper procedures have not been followed or the wrong conclusions have been reached when assessing plans and projects under European legislation.

This is a complex area of the law and, if you feel that it is relevant to an issue in which you are involved, then it is worth searching the internet for up-to-date legal cases.

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