No products in the basket.
Mid Ulster District Council’s proposed requirement for all planning applications to include a Preliminary Ecological Appraisal (PEA) in order to be validated has been removed from the Council’s final Planning Validation Application Checklist, published today.
The change follows a public consultation on Mid Ulster’s Draft Checklist, during which RSUA called on the Council to align with established practice across the other nine Northern Ireland councils that have drafted or finalised their validation checklists to date.
For most applications, these councils have required only a completed Biodiversity Checklist to establish whether a local development proposal is likely to require additional ecological surveys. This approach has now been adopted by Mid Ulster.
Understanding the change
A PEA establishes the ecological value and characteristics of a site, identifies potential impacts from a proposed development and considers whether further ecological surveys or mitigation are required.
The Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) recommends that PEAs are undertaken by suitably qualified and experienced ecologists.
The PEA does not replace the Biodiversity Checklist, which acts as an initial screening tool to determine whether specific ecological surveys may be required.
Where the Biodiversity Checklist indicates that further ecological assessment is necessary, a PEA can provide a more detailed evaluation of the site. The PEA may then recommend further specialist surveys where potential impacts on protected species, habitats or other ecological interests are identified.
Removing the mandatory PEA requirement could therefore save applicants some time and costs by avoiding the need to commission and wait for an ecologist’s assessment where the Biodiversity Checklist has already identified the appropriate ecological surveys.
More information
RSUA’s full response to the original consultation can be accessed here.
If you have any questions or comments about this update, please contact Curtis Large, RSUA Policy and Public Affairs Officer, at curtis@rsua.org.uk
