Environmental Impact Assessments – are they needed for Reserved Matter Applications?

United Kingdom

The cases concerned major redevelopments at White City and Crystal Palace. The disputes have taken approximately 10 years to work their way through the UK domestic courts to the ECJ.

There are 2 basic principles which these cases have now set down:

  • Outline permission and approval of reserved matters together are both stages at which ‘development consent’ can be granted.
  • Since the European Directive from which the UK Regulations derive requires likely significant environmental effects to be assessed before development consent is granted, any likely significant effects at the reserved matters stage must also be assessed.

Accordingly the Court found that the UK had incorrectly transposed parts of the European Directive into UK law by only requiring EIA at the outline planning permission stage.

1. The UK needs to amend its Regulations to allow for an EIA to be carried out at the reserved matters stage as well as at the outline planning permission stage.

2. However, an EIA will not necessarily be required at the reserved matters stage. It is likely to be required if:

  • the details proposed at the reserved matters stage extend the scope of the outline planning permission.
  • environmental effects were not all identifiable at the outline permission stage.
  • the environmental circumstances have changed.
  • relevant government or policy has changed.
  • there has been development in the nearby area.

3. An EIA may be required at the reserved matters stage even if one was not required at the outline permission stage.

4. An EIA required at the reserved matters stage must be comprehensive and must relate to all aspects of the project which have not yet been assessed or which require a fresh assessment.

Increasingly over the past few years planning applications have been required to be supported by detailed information, studies and surveys. Bare outline applications for large projects are therefore becoming rare.

However, these decisions emphasise that great care is needed at the outline permission and reserved matters stages to ensure that all environmental effects have been considered properly. If all environmental effects are not considered, a planning approval will be open to challenge even after outline consent has been served, causing delay or at worst the halting of development altogether.