Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA)

Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is a legal process that helps councils understand the likely environmental effects of plans and programmes before they are adopted. For Local Plans, SEA helps assess how different planning options could affect the environment and supports more informed decision-making.

The SEA considers a wide range of issues, including:

• Biodiversity and nature
• Climate change
• Flood risk and water resources
• Air quality and pollution
• Historic buildings and heritage
• Landscape and townscape
• Health and wellbeing
• Transport and infrastructure

It also considers how these issues interact with each other and whether different approaches could lead to better environmental outcomes.

The Council is preparing a new Local Plan for Nottingham. The Local Plan will guide how the city grows and changes over time, including the location of new homes, jobs, infrastructure and community facilities, and will form an important part of the framework used to determine planning applications. 

Under the Environmental Assessment of Plans and Programmes Regulations 2004, Local Plans are generally required to be subject to Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA). The SEA is a statutory process that helps ensure that likely environmental effects are identified, assessed and taken into account during plan preparation. 

The SEA is not a separate exercise undertaken at the end of the process. It is integrated into the preparation of the Local Plan from the outset, informing the development and assessment of planning options, the consideration of reasonable alternatives, and the selection of preferred policies and site allocations. This helps ensure that environmental considerations are taken into account alongside social and economic factors as the Local Plan is developed.

The SEA brings together evidence about Nottingham's environment and the challenges and opportunities facing the city. This includes:

• Nature conservation and biodiversity
• Housing and communities
• Health and wellbeing
• Climate change and energy
• Water resources and flood risk
• Air quality and pollution
• Historic environment and heritage
• Landscape, townscape and design
• Infrastructure and transport

The SEA helps identify where planning choices could have positive or negative environmental effects and where improvements or mitigation may be needed.

The SEA will be undertaken alongside the preparation of the Local Plan and will help ensure that environmental considerations are taken into account throughout the plan-making process. 

It will help the Council to: 

• develop and assess planning options and policies; 
• compare reasonable alternatives; 
• identify likely environmental effects, including potential benefits and adverse impacts; 
• consider opportunities to avoid, reduce or mitigate negative effects; 
• inform the selection of preferred approaches, policies and site allocations; and 
• monitor the environmental effects of the Local Plan once adopted. 

Where significant adverse effects are identified, the Council will consider whether changes can be made to the Local Plan, including alternative approaches, mitigation measures or policy amendments, before decisions are taken on preferred options.

The SEA follows a structured process: 

Current stage: Nottingham City Council is currently progressing the Scoping stage of the SEA process. Consultation on the draft Scoping Report has now been completed, and the comments received are being considered. The final Scoping Report will be published on this website once the consultation responses have been reviewed. 

The document below is the draft SEA Scoping Report that was published for consultation. It was made available to support consultation with the statutory consultation bodies and other interested parties on the scope and content of the Strategic Environmental Assessment. 

Strategic Environmental Assessment Scoping Report 

The consultation period has now closed, and the responses received are being reviewed. A revised final Scoping Report will be prepared taking account of the comments received during consultation and will be published on this page once complete. 

The draft report remains available for reference and reflects the version that was consulted upon. The final published version may differ where changes have been made in response to consultation feedback. When the revised report is published, this page will be updated and will include both the final Scoping Report and any other key documents prepared as part of the Strategic Environmental Assessment process.