Sustainability Appraisal (SA) is a statutory process that assesses the effects of plans and strategies against a range of economic, social and environmental considerations. Carrying out an SA allows us to:

• Consider how a plan contributes to improvements in environmental, social and economic conditions
• Identify any significant adverse effects that a plan might have
• Amend proposals in a plan to avoid any significant adverse effects
• Propose mitigation measures to counter any remaining significant adverse effects
• In this way, SA can help make sure that a plan’s proposals are the most appropriate given the reasonable alternatives.

The first stage in SA is the preparation of a draft scoping report for consultation. We then consider any representations before preparing a final SA scoping report. The methodology set out in this is then used for the SA of all local plan documents.

The Consultation Draft SA scoping report, summary of representations on the Consultation Draft SA scoping report and final SA scoping report are available to download from this page.