Appropriate Assessment

Under the Habitats Directive Local Authorities are required to produce an Appropriate Assessment (AA) to determine any potential impacts of an individual development or strategic level plan on the SACs and SPAs. Natura 2000 Sites (which includes Special Protected Areas (SPA) and Special Areas of Conservation (SAC)) comprise an ecological network of Europe’s finest wildlife areas. These areas afford high levels of protection under the European Habitats Directive.

An Appropriate Assessment has been produced to determine whether the land use plans coming forward in the emerging Torbay Local Development Framework will have (alone or in combination) a significant impact on nearby Natura 2000 Sites.

The Appropriate Assessment documents screen the Development Plan Documents and Supplementary Planning Documents in the LDF for likely impact on the nearby SAC. It should be noted that this assessment is carried out at a strategic level and that further appropriate assessment work may be required at the planning application stage for individual sites.

The documents in the LDF will be screened once they reach the Regulation 17 stage in the planning process. By this stage the plans would have sufficient detail to make an initial assessment of their likely impacts. So far the following documents have been screened:

• Greenspace Strategy (Regulation 17 draft)
• Urban Design Guide (Regulation 17 draft)

Important Note:

It should be noted that the assessments made within these documents are drafts only and are subject to discussion with Natural England.  Where documents change significantly in later stages of the process the appraisal matrix will be revisited to determine in changes to the plan will impact upon the SAC.  As more documents reach the Regulation 17 stage consideration will be given to the Cumulative impacts of all the plans.

Related Documents

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Related Documents

Appropriate Assessment - Part 1

Appropriate Assessment - Part 2

To view any published Related Documents for this service you will require the appropriate software. To download this software please see our documents help page. All links to documents will open in a new window. To request documents and files in an alternative format please contact us using the contact information provided on this page.