Developing EIA: one year on

IEMA hosts forum to celebrate the first anniversary of launch of Institute's EIA Quality Mark scheme to improve environmental impact assessment (EIA) practice in the UK

A forum entitled “Developing EIA: the Quality Mark one year on” was held on 17 April in London and featured presentations from Environ, RPS, Savills, SLR Consulting and Temple Group.

Chaired by Peter Cole of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, more than 80 members, including some from the 43 Quality Mark registrants heard presentations on a range of EIA related topics, including mitigating measures for environment statements, renewable energy in planning and the Rochdale Envelope approach to pre-planning.

The event also included a remote presentation from IEMA’s policy and practice lead for EIA, Josh Fothergill, who provided an update on the review of the EIA Directive.

A lively question and answer session added an extra dimension to the day and resulted in the formation of a working group to develop and write an e-Briefing on considering iterative design in environment statements, which will be available to IEMA members later in 2012.

IEMA would like to thank K&L Gates LLP for the kind use of its venue at One New Change, which made hosting this event possible, as well as the time donated by the five speakers and the chair.

As the event marked the one-year anniversary of the Quality Mark, it served as a timely reminder of what the scheme has delivered for the wider IEMA membership. Since April 2011, the library of non-technical summaries, articles, case studies, presentations and webinars has consistently grown. There are now hundreds of useful downloads available.

As the scheme’s commitments require registrants to regularly provide materials and information for the benefit of IEMA members, this resource hub will continue to expand and become ever more useful.

Fothergill is delighted with what the EIA Quality Mark now offers.

“When the initiative was first launched we knew that it would enable EIA professionals to communicate what they were doing to other members,” he says. “But the EIA Quality Mark has become much more than that and April’s event really demonstrated how rich and dynamic the scheme is.”