The purpose of sustainability appraisal is to appraise the social, environmental and economic effects of strategies and policies in a development plan document or supplementary planning document from the outset of the preparation process. This is to ensure that decisions are made that accord with sustainable development. A sustainability appraisal is one of the tests of soundness for a development plan document.
The Sustainability Appraisal process has a number of set stages that must be followed, but each can be returned to at any time as new information is gathered. The process of appraising a development plan document is set out as part of the overall preparation process on the development plan document webpage.
There are a number of important features of sustainability appraisal:
- It is started early in the preparation process to ensure the plans adopt sustainable options.
- It involves local communities, businesses, government agencies and other stakeholders in the decision-making process.
- A report is produced to document the findings of the appraisal, state how it has influenced the proposals and set out arrangements for monitoring.
The sustainability appraisal process incorporates a strategic environmental assessment (external link) in line with government guidance. This concentrates purely on the environmental impacts of a plan at a strategic level.
Sustainability appraisal for the Core Strategy
We are currently carrying out a sustainability appraisal on our Core Strategy Development Plan document.
Stage 1: Scoping
The first stage of the appraisal process is to write a broad Scoping Report. This Scoping Report outlines the background information, policy context and key sustainability issues relevant to the Local Development Framework. It also sets out methodologies for completing the remainder of the appraisal process.
Between 19 June and 30 July 2007 we made a draft version of our Scoping Report available to view and download on this website. We also sent the report to statutory consultees and a range of other organisations inviting their comments and suggestions for improvement.
The most recent version of the scoping report (which incorporates the responses we received and new evidence gathered) can be downloaded below.
We have also produced a series of topic papers which support the scoping report.
Stage 2: Issues and options
As part of the Core Strategy preparation process, we identified five different spatial options for how we could focus and locate future development in the Borough. We checked each of these spatial options against our sustainability appraisal framework to help us to understand what impacts each option could have on sustainability. We involved a wide range of officers in the appraisal and held a community workshop to help us identify the impacts.
We have produced an interim sustainability appraisal report (.pdf, 1456Kb) which contains our findings at this stage.
You can comment on this report by emailing us at sustainability@wigan.gov.uk or you can send your comments to Ian McCluskey at the address given below.
We are consulting on this report alongside the Core Strategy Issues and Options Report from 6 February to 26 March 2008
What's next?
Stage 3: Preferred Options
We will be carrying out a more detailed appraisal of the preferred options to make sure we identify and tackle any negative impacts and enhance the positives.
We will present our findings in a final Sustainability Appraisal Report.
Sustainability Appraisal of Supplementary Planning Documents
We will also be carrying out sustainability appraisals on our supplementary planning documents. We will publish any additional evidence we gather for each appraisal in a separate scoping report.
We will also be comparing the sustainability of different options for each supplementary planning document and assessing the preferred option (which will be a draft of the supplementary planning document itself).
Listed below are all the supplementary planning documents we are in the process of appraising:
Residential Extensions Supplementary Planning Document
