The list below is a record of advice the Planning Inspectorate has provided in respect of the Planning Act 2008 process.
There is a statutory duty under section 51 of the Planning Act 2008 to record the advice that is given in relation to an application or a potential application and to make this publicly available. Advice we have provided is recorded below together with the name of the person or organisation who asked for the advice and the project it relates to. The privacy of any other personal information will be protected in accordance with our Information Charter which you should view before sending information to the Planning Inspectorate.
Note that after a project page has been created for a particular application, any advice provided that relates to it will also be published under the ‘s51 advice’ tab on the relevant project page.
Advice given between between 1 October 2009 and 14 April 2015 has been archived. View the archived advice.
The Sizewell C Project View all advice for this project
Enquiry
Please see attached
Advice given
Dear Mr Edwards
Thank you for your emails dated 23 November, 29 November and 3 December regarding EDF Energy’s proposal for Sizewell C, and Suffolk Coastal District Council’s (SCDC) Local Plan consultation.
In your emails you refer to Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) screening. The purpose of the screening process is to establish whether a proposal is considered to be EIA development or not. Under the 2009 and 2017 EIA regulations, nuclear power stations are ‘Schedule 1’ developments and are therefore automatically considered to be EIA development, therefore these types of development do not require to be ‘screened’ at the pre-application stage.
The EIA Regulations require a developer, prior to undertaking their statutory (section 42 of the Planning Act 2008) consultation, to either request a screening opinion, or to notify the Secretary of State that their proposal is EIA development. The Planning Inspectorate acknowledged (in paragraph 1.2 of the EIA Scoping Opinion dated June 2014), that EDF Energy made this notification.
EIA is a process which developers undertake at the pre-application stage, the result of which is an Environmental Statement (ES) which is submitted with their application. Therefore the environmental work/assessments are an ongoing process at this stage, however the developer is required to consult on their Preliminary Environmental Information which will be included in their consultation documents at the start of 2019.
The Planning Inspectorate does not host developer’s pre-application consultation material on our website, we publish EIA screening and scoping documents in addition to requests for advice and our responses, however you are advised to use the developer’s website and to liaise directly with the developer at the pre-application stage to inform them of the comments you have on their proposal, this will enable them to consider your comments prior to finalising their proposal and submitting their application.
In regard to the land which you refer to in your email which is included in both EDF Energy’s and SCDC’s consultations, both parties will have the opportunity to provide comments to each other on their proposals.
Please note, the Planning Inspectorate had a meeting last week with Edf, a copy of the note for this meeting will be shortly be published on the Sizewell C project webpage.
As per your previous emails, I would be grateful if you could please ensure that all future correspondence continues to be sent to the Sizewell C mailbox rather than individual mailboxes.
I hope you find this information to be helpful.
