§ Mrs. Ann WintertonTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (1) if she will list the reasons why her Department has chosen not to 435W utilise an indicative minimum area threshold for the implementation of the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive; [23068]
(2) if she will make a statement on her Department's definition of (a) uncultivated land and (b) unimproved land for the purposes of the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive; [23069]
(3) if she will make a statement on her Department's decision to implement the uncultivated and semi-natural areas provisions of the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive. [23067]
§ Mr. MorleyThe Government gave a commitment in the Rural White Paper in November 2000 and to Parliament to consult on implementing the uncultivated land provisions of the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive. The Environmental Impact Assessment (Uncultivated Land and Semi-natural Areas) (England) Regulations 2001, S.I. No. 3966, will come into force on 1 February 2002.
In our consultations on the regulations it was agreed that to be as helpful as possible to farmers the Government should provide a working guide to key but undefined terms in the Directive. The resulting guidelines, a copy of which will be placed in the Library of the House, will set out the categories of land concerned, including to unimproved grassland, heath, moorland, scrubland and wetlands. Unimproved grassland would typically include meadows and grazing pasture, downland or other open or enclosed upland grassland with some tree cover.
The European Court of Justice has established that, even with indicative thresholds, an assessment would still be needed on whether a project was likely to give rise to significant environmental effects. To provide some degree of certainty, the Government decided that each case should be screened, but only those which give rise to significant environmental effects would be considered further under the Regulations.