As you may remember we were required to carry out a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) before our Plan could proceed to the next stage of the process towards adoption, namely Regulation 16 consultation. We have now received the draft Environmental Report from AECOM (the final outcome from the SEA). This has been reviewed by the Steering Group and comments returned to AECOM for some wording amendments. Once the final version is available, we will share it with you. However, in general terms the report found our Plan policies to, at the very least, have a minor positive impact on the environmental factors considered within the scope of the report, with some policies having a significant positive impact (mainly our environment policies on biodiversity). There were no negative impacts. Nonetheless there are some recommendations to amend a small number of policies to strengthen them, and the Plan overall. We will now work through those recommendations before submitting the revised Plan (and other documentation) to Broxtowe for Regulation 16 consultation, along with the Environmental Report. Once the revision is complete, we will update the Plan page on the website accordingly, along with a revised Roadmap to Plan adoption which is being updated for us by Broxtowe.
It has been a long time since we submitted our draft Plan in June 2020, but at last we are nearing the home straight!
As always please do feel free to ask any questions you may have on this or anything else via the Contact Us page, and we’ll do our best to answer them via the Questions and Answers page.
David, Vice Chair