In accordance with Section 19 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, policies set out in Local Plans must be subject to a Sustainability Appraisal (SA), and also incorporate the requirements of the Environmental Assessment of Plans and Programmes Regulations 2004 (the SEA regulations).
The SA/SEA is a systematic process that should be undertaken at each stage of the Plan’s preparation, assessing the effects of the emerging Local Plan proposals on sustainable development when judged against all reasonable alternatives. The Councils should ensure that the future results of the SA clearly justify its policy choices. In meeting the development needs of the area, it should be clear from the results of this assessment why some policy options have progressed, and others have been rejected. This must be undertaken through a comparative and equal assessment of each reasonable alternative, in the same level of detail for both chosen and rejected alternatives. The Councils’ decisionmaking and scoring should be robust, justified, and transparent.