Masterplan: Burnham on Crouch – Essex

With large mixed use schemes there is often pressure from Council’s for developers to undertake a full Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).

Evolution Town Planning were instructed to manage the process of EIA in support of a planning application for 450 dwellings; 3.4 hectares of employment space; community facilities and a care home in Maldon District, Essex.

We started our work by seeking formal EIA screening opinion from the local planning authority.  We submitted a comprehensive screening letter which set out why a full EIA should not be necessary in order to assess the environmental impact of the scheme.

Whilst the local planning authority chose to request an EIA the  information provided in our screening letter allowed the scope of the subsequent EIA to be reduced down to only two topics (biodiversity and heritage) excluding other topics such as highways, noise and landscape amongst other saving time and cost.