.png){kind=small}
Hydro Resource Evaluation Tool
public acceptability and engagement
Who can advise you on the public acceptability issues?
In the first instance it is advisable to talk to the local Planning Authority (either the local authority planning department or the national park planning authority in the Lake District), and to the relevant Environment Agency officer, to get a summary of the issues that will have to be addressed in your specific project site. As mentioned above, the issues that need to be addressed for planning permission and for an extraction licence overlap, and those with experience in implementing a community-scale project suggest that people:
- Get a ‘personal champion’ in the Environment Agency to coordinate communication between different divisions of Environment Agency and push it forward.
- Do the ‘detailed design’ with the Environment Agency
- Take the following time for planning into consideration. A “Validation Requirement” from the authority planning officer will be needed. Early on, find out the detail, scale etc of the detailed diagrams that will be required and provide the right level of detail to planners and to the Environment Agency to forestall further requirements for details. It can take up to 6 months to ‘validate’, 2 months from planning and 4 months from the Environment Agency licensing section.
- Leave submitting the planning application until you are sure you have the Environment Agency on board! Planners will anyway contact the ‘planning section’ of the Environment Agency, not water resources…
The identification of other acceptability issues is one of the central purposes of your engagement activities at all stages, and recording such issues as they are raised by e.g. stakeholders, interest groups and members of the public should complement the formal stages of project assessment that are required for planning and extraction licence processes. Going beyond what it is strictly required in producing an assessment is best practice, although the importance of issues should be judged on a case-by-case basis. If an issue can be addressed with a minimum of investment of time and other resources, to the satisfaction of those who raised it, the process of engaging and responding has been fulfilled.
