Government guidance issued in 2005 means that certain plans, policies and programmes (PPPs) will require an assessment of their social, economic and environmental impacts. This is carried out through Sustainability Appraisal (SA). SA can be applied to development plans, supplementary planning documents, community strategies and any PPP thought likely to have significant environmental effects.
When carried out on certain statutory plans, SA must meet the requirements of the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) Directive (2001/42/EC). This Directive requires the assessment to be centred around and measured against a clear set of evidence or baseline data.
The purpose of SA is to promote more sustainable development by checking and testing a plan for the quality and robustness of its environmental, social and economic content. An SA or SEA can provide more sustainable policy direction or advice enabling the development that the plan is guiding to inherently become more sustainable. Sustainability appraisal must be closely linked with the plan-making process and be iterative.
Cumbria County Council's Sustainability Team have developed a Sustainability Appraisal Framework for Cumbria. The document is used as the basis for testing plans and policies that require SA. The framework has been developed with and agreed by the District Authorities in Cumbria as well as the statutory consultees required by the SEA Directive, Natural England, English Heritage and the Environment Agency.
Follow the links below to view the sustainability framework and examples of sustainability appraisals carried out by the Sustainability Team:
- Cumbria Sustainability Appraisal Framework (16.25 KB PDF) FULL DOCUMENT
- Sustainability Appraisal of Cumbria Wind Energy Supplementary Planning Document (Scoping Report) (232 KB PDF) FULL DOCUMENT
- Sustainability Appraisal of Cumbria Wind Energy Supplementary Planning Document (Sustainability Report) (1.26 MB PDF) FULL DOCUMENT
- Sustainability Appraisal of the Cumbria Local Area Agreement (LAA) (103 KB PDF) FULL DOCUMENT
- Sustainability Appraisal of West Cumbria Community Strategy (206 KB PDF) FULL DOCUMENT
- Sustainability Appraisal of Barrow Community Strategy (235 KB PDF) FULL DOCUMENT
- Sustainability Appraisal of Draft Joint Structure Plan (452 KB PDF) FULL DOCUMENT