Strategic Environmental Assessment

Strategic Environmental Assessment is a systematic and effective process for ensuring that environmental issues are taken into account at every stage in the preparation, implementation, monitoring and review of plans, programmes and strategies. 

The requirement for assessment has come from Directive 2001/42/EC, which is known as the Environmental Assessment Directive. This was brought into practice in Scotland by the Environmental Assessment (Scotland) Act 2005. The assessment is carried out by the authority responsible for the production of the plan, programme or strategy.

The implementation of Strategic Environmental Assessment will achieve better integration of environmental considerations at the heart of decision-making through a more rigorous and transparent planning process. It will benefit the development planning process and provide a framework which will enable the Environmental Impact Assessment of individual projects to be more efficiently and effectively targeted.

Scottish Natural Heritage, as a public body, has to carry out Strategic Environmental Assessment on our own plans, programmes and strategies.  We are also a "Consultation Authority", along with the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) and Historic Scotland, providing advice and comment on other public sector plans, programmes and strategies.

On 21st July, 2011, SEPA published its report into the findings of the Scottish Strategic Environmental Assessment Review on behalf of the three Consultation Authorities. This is the first comprehensive review into how well the assessment process is working in Scotland.  The report concludes that, in general, it is working reasonably well.  However, the Main Report    and Summary    detail 10 key recommendations on opportunities for improvements to the process, awareness raising and skills levels.  Full details of these recommendations can be found in the links above.  Further details of the research project can be found at SEPA's website  .

What we can do to help

We can help in several ways:

• Natural Spaces  provides access to the key datasets we hold on aspects of Scotland's nature and landscapes.  These spatial datasets can be downloaded free of charge.
• providing advice on the impacts of plans, programmes and strategies on Scotland's landscapes;
• being clear about our Policy towards Strategic Environmental Assessment and how we administer the process at the Screening  , Scoping  and Environmental Report  stages.