Category: Environmental Information Regulations 2004

Ruler

Or REULRR. Or the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill, introduced into Parliament on 22 September 2022. A Bill which I was only vaguely aware of until Nicola Gooch’s excellent blog post What Truss did on my holidays: It’s much more than ‘just’ the mini budget….  (26 September 2022). 

As Nicola explains:

 “If passed, REULRR will effectively sweep away any and all EU laws that the Government hasn’t actively decided to keep.

It does this by:

  1. Repealing EU derived laws by the end of 2023. The government will be able to extend that deadline to 23 June 2026 (the tenth anniversary of the Brexit referendum) but can’t further extend it.
  2. Repealing the principle of supremacy of EU law by the end of 2023. Currently, any EU decision reached before 1 January 2021 is binding on UK courts unless the government departs from it. However, this bill will subjugate all EU law in favour of UK law by default. 
  3. Repealing directly effective EU law rights and obligations in UK law by the end of 2023; and
  4. Establishing a new priority rule requiring retained direct EU legislation to be interpreted and applied consistently with domestic legislation.”

She discussed this further at our clubhouse Planning Law Unplanned session last week on the Growth Plan, which Sam Stafford has now trimmed neatly into a 50 Shades of Planning podcast:

🍎 https://t.co/BaNDFpIlfb

🎧 https://open.spotify.com/episode/0vKryknMBdUBxOdidhTX26

You will remember that the European Union Withdrawal Act 2018 had the effect of retaining, post Brexit, EU-derived domestic legislation such as the regulations in relation to environmental impact assessment, strategic environmental impact and conservation of habitats, leaving it to Parliament in due course to determine the extent to which the legislation should subsequently be repealed or amended. 

As explained in the explanatory notes to the REULRR Bill:

”The REUL [retained EU-derived law] framework established by EUWA, however, was not intended to be maintained indefinitely on the UK statute book and now the Government is in the position to ensure REUL can be revoked, replaced, restated, updated and removed or amended to reduce burdens.”

The Bill now places a firm deadline on that process:

“The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill facilitates the amendment, repeal and replacement of REUL by the end of 2023, and assimilates REUL remaining in force after that date by removing the special EU law features attached to it.”

The end of 2023 deadline can only be extended, to 23 June 2026 “should a lack of parliamentary time, or external factors, hinder progress towards reform of retained EU law prior to the 2023 sunset date.”

Is this of concern?

In short, yes of course. It may be said that the Government is committed to a principle of non-regression from current environmental standards, but given the current political pinball and the lack of relevant ministers with any real experience of the sheer complexity and nuances of what they are dealing with, frankly anything is possible. Campaign groups are certainly on edge: Brexit freedoms bill’ could abolish all pesticide protections, campaigners say (Guardian, 29 September 2022).

To an extent, at a high level, the principle of non-regression is built into the trade and co-operation agreement between the UK and EU which was signed on 30 December 2020 and came into force on 1 May 2021. The UK gave various, at least theoretically, binding commitments in the agreement as to non-regression from environmental levels of protection, which I describe in my 27 December 2020 blog post Brexit & Planning: An Update.

There are also generalised commitments within the Environment Act 2021 (which of course Parliament is always of course at liberty to amend or repeal as it chooses). The Government consulted in May 2022 in relation to its draft environmental principles statement. The statement has not yet been finalised and there is not yet any duty upon ministers to take it into account in their policy making. This may not be until summer 2023 at the earliest! The Office for Environmental Protection (a body established pursuant to the 2021 Act) has criticised the statement for “a relatively limited degree of ambition”. The OEP has similarly criticised as unambitious the Government’s draft environmental targets, also consulted upon pursuant to the 2021 Act. 

As against these inchoate commitments to environmental standards, what is going to give in the face of a Government which, according to its Growth Plan, will be “disapplying legacy EU red tape where appropriate” in the investment zones it is proposing, and which proposes a Planning and Infrastructure Bill which will be:

  • “reducing the burden of environmental assessments
  • reducing bureaucracy in the consultation process
  • reforming habitats and species regulations”?

Genuine improvements to the processes are certainly possible. But do we trust the Government to strike an appropriate balance, hurtling towards a self-imposed December 2023 deadline and (at the latest) 2024 general election? In the coming year, most of our environmental legislation, and planning legislation to the extent that it is intertwined, will need to be reviewed, line by line, and, given that most of it is in the form of secondary legislation (and the sheer lack of time – after all the REULRR Bill covers all EU derived legislation!), there will be relatively limited Parliamentary scrutiny of that process. Even with the best of intentions, how is this timescale even going to be possible if we are to avoid a complete bodge-up? We have been treading (often polluted) water for so long and we still have no sense whatsoever of what the long trumpeted “outcomes focused” approach will look like in practice – eg see my 2 April 2022 blog post Is the Nature Recovery Green Paper The Answer? (& If So What Was The Question?)

On a slightly different, although possibly related, note….

At 6 pm on Wednesday 5 October 2022 we will be having a discussion on Clubhouse with barrister Hashi Mohamed, around the themes of his FT article The housing crisis sits at the centre of Britain’s ills (1 October 2022, behind paywall) and his recent book A home of one’s own, a trenchant and personal look at the politics of planning and housing.

Join via this link. If you use the link to RSVP in advance (you don’t have to) you’ll get a reminder when we start – and we can get a feel for likely numbers. 

What is needed to calm the nerves all round – on planning, on housing, on environmental protection – is detail. When are we going to get it? HM Treasury announced on 26 September 2022:

“Cabinet Ministers will announce further supply side growth measures in October and early November, including changes to the planning system, business regulations, childcare, immigration, agricultural productivity, and digital infrastructure.”

Always just another month or so to wait, every time.

Simon Ricketts, 1 October 2022

Personal views, et cetera

Image courtesy of Estay Lim via Unsplash

The Latest on Viability Disclosure

Each September LD Events’ annual Viability and Planning conference comes around. My regular slot at the event covers ”transparency in the viability process – access to information” and it’s always interesting how the climate has changed over the previous 12 months. This blog post provides links to some of the key decisions and policy developments, supplementing my 27 September 2016 presentation. 

Information Tribunal

In the same way that previous years have been dominated by the Information Tribunal’s decisions in London Borough of Southwark v Information Commissioner, Lend Lease and Glasspool  (9 May 2014, Heygate Estate) and Royal Borough of Greenwich v Information Commissioner and Brownie  (30 January 2015, Greenwich Peninsula), this year there has been another big Information Tribunal decision: Clyne v Information Commissioner and London Borough of Lambeth  (14 June 2016, Streatham Megabowl).


Clyne is important because the Tribunal go in detail through all of the following elements of the viability appraisal, justifying item by item, their decision to order disclosure:

 • Private residential values broken down by individual unit size/location within the development?

• Affordable housing average values per square foot?

• Gross development value?

• Marketing budget?

• Construction costs?

• Professional fees?

• Projected costs : contingency percentage?

• Projected costs : letting/sale agent and legal fees?

• Benchmark land value?

• Surplus/deficit figure?

• Other : performance measures?

 This was a case where the figure allowed for developer’s profit had already been disclosed.

 Information Commissioner

 There has also this year been a plethora of decisions by the Information Commissioner. Each very much turns on its facts. However, the following basic principles are commonly set out:

 – The four necessary criteria set out in Bristol City Council v Information Commissioner and Portland and Brunswick Squares Association  (24 May 2010) to get to first base ie establishing that the information is commercially confidential for the purposes of Regulation 12(5)(e) of the Environmental Information Regulations 2004:

(i) Is the information commercial or industrial in nature?

(ii) Is confidentiality provided by law? This will include confidentiality imposed on any person by the common law of confidence, contractual obligation, or statute.

(iii) Does the confidentiality protect a legitimate economic interest? Where the arguments refer to the economic interests of a third party, it will not be sufficient for a public authority to speculate on the potential harm attached to disclosure. Instead, the public authority must have evidence that demonstrates the arguments genuinely reflect the concerns of the third party.

(iv) The confidentiality would be adversely affected by disclosure. Although this is a necessary condition, the Information Tribunal in the Bristol City Council case considered that the disclosure of truly confidential information into the public domain would invariably harm the confidential nature of that information. As such, if the preceding three stages of the test are fulfilled, it will follow that the exception is engaged. Where this is found to be the case, a public authority must next go on to assess whether the balance of the public interest required disclosure

– It is not sufficient that harm “might” be caused by disclosure. It is necessary to show that on the balance of probabilities it would be caused.

– Those resisting disclosure on the basis of the harm that would be caused need to show a specific link between precise categories of withheld information and the stated harm.

– Detailed consideration as to whether the public interest in maintaining the exemption is outweighed by the public interest in disclosure.

 These are some of the decisions from the last 12 months:

Sweets Way Estate  (Barnet, 9 August 2016) – disclosure.

Doone  (East Hampshire, 16 June 2016) – disclosure.

Aylesbury Estate  (Southwark, 25 April 2016) – disclosure. 

Bishopsgate Goodsyard  (Tower Hamlets, 22 March 2016) – disclosure.

Heygate Estate  (Southwark, 15 February 2016) – redactions of DVS reports upheld equivalent to what was withheld in Glasspool, ie proposed commercial values, financial gearing rates, base inflation percentages for the delivery period set against assumed regeneration inflation figures, cost analysis summaries and construction costs. 

Tuke School, Peckham  (Southwark, 13 January 2016) – overage provisions in sale contract withheld.

 Chase Farm Hospital site  (Enfield: 9 December 2015) – withheld: forecasted residential land sale receipts and assumed value of land associated with a new school. Sensitive negotiation position of NHS Trust.

Brentford FC new stadium  (Hounslow: 22 October 2015) – all disclosed except specific appraisal information relevant to subsequent negotiations.

 Silver Hill  (Winchester, 17 September 2015) – withheld: development value of individual elements of the scheme, breakdown of individual costs and resultant net development value and profit, estimated rental value of commercial property, percentage of estimated rental values which the proposed ground rents would represent, budget for acquiring third party land, estimated construction costs for individual blocks, letting and marketing costs, interest rate on financing.

 London boroughs turning up the heat

Ahead of any updated London-wide guidance from Sadiq Khan (and his promised team of viability specialists), different boroughs are taking different approaches. For example the Hounslow local validation list  October 2015 and Greenwich local validation list  January 2016 both now require unredacted viability appraisals, which will be publically available. Other boroughs have been adopting development viability SPDs, for example Islington’s January 2016 SPD  and Southwark’s March 2016 SPD  , both of which require justification for exempting any elements of an appraisal from disclosure. Other boroughs take a more traditional approach to treatment of commercially sensitive material – who knows, perhaps even heeding the advice at paragraph 4.3 of the RICS guidance on financial viability in planning  :

 “Pre-application discussions usually proceed on the basis of treating commercial information provided by a developer (applicant) or their consultant as confidential. In order to encourage openness and transparency in the viability process both at pre- and post- application, it is also often the case that the viability reports submitted to a local planning authority are required to be classified as confidential in part or as a whole. This is to encourage the applicant to disclose the maximum amount of information, which can then be reviewed and reported upon. LPAs should therefore be asked to treat and hold this information on a similarly reciprocal basis and respect that disclosure of confidential information could be prejudicial to the developer (applicant) if it were to enter the public domain. Information will usually be disclosed to the LPA adviser but not to the general public as it may be commercially sensitive.”

 Simon Ricketts 26.9.16

Personal views, et cetera