Written evidence from the Chiltern Ridges
HS2 Action Group (HSR 46)
1. This note is specifically directed to paragraph
6 (Impact) of the issues to be addressed by the Transport Select
Committee (TSC) and in particular subparagraph 2 of paragraph
6 as follows.
Are environmental costs and benefits (including
in relation to noise) correctly accounted for in the business
case?
2. Given that, on the recommendations of HS2
Limited, following their own recommended terms of reference,*
on which the consultation paper on HS2 is based, HS2 Ltd indicate
that there was no real alternative to avoiding the Chilterns AONB,
the Committee are requested to examine in particular why the policies
laid down in Planning Policy Statement 7 (PPS7) were not included
within the terms of reference and why DfT accepted those recommended
terms of reference** without requiring PPS7 to be included and
taken into account or why DfT itself did not take them into account.
More importantly, with particular reference environmental costs
and implications, the Committee are further requested to consider
the implications had the consideration of PPS7, a required public
policy, been an absolute requirement of HS2Ltd's terms of reference,
as it should have been, and why the policies laid down in PPS7
were not reported on or formed part of HS2 Limited's deliberations
or of DfT's subsequent report and recommendations.
3. PLANNING POLICY
STATEMENT 7—SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT IN
RURAL AREAS
The following paragraphs from PPS7 are relevant
in this respect
Nationally designated areas
21. Nationally designated areas comprising National
Parks, the Broads, the New Forest Heritage Area and Areas of Outstanding
Natural Beauty (AONB), have been confirmed by the Government as
having the highest status of protection in relation to landscape
and scenic beauty. The conservation of the natural beauty of the
landscape and countryside should therefore be given great weight
in planning policies and development control decisions in these
areas. The conservation of wildlife and the cultural heritage
are important considerations in all these areas. They are a specific
purpose for National Parks, where they should also be given great
weight in planning policies and development control decisions.
As well as reflecting these priorities, planning policies in LDDs
and where appropriate, RSS, should also support suitably located
and designed development necessary to facilitate the economic
and social well- being of these designated areas and their communities,
including the provision of adequate housing to meet identified
local needs.
22. Major developments should not take place
in these designated areas, except in exceptional circumstances.
This policy includes major development proposals that raise issues
of national significance. Because of the serious impact that major
developments may have on these areas of natural beauty, and taking
account of the recreational opportunities that they provide, applications
for all such developments should be subject to the most rigorous
examination. Major development proposals should be demonstrated
to be in the public interest before being allowed to proceed.
Consideration of such applications should therefore include an
assessment of:
(i) the need for the development, including in
terms of any national considerations, and the impact of permitting
it, or refusing it, upon the local economy;
(ii) the cost of, and scope for, developing elsewhere
outside the designated area,or meeting the need for it in some
other way; and
(iii) any detrimental effect on the environment,
the landscape and recreational opportunities, and the extent to
which that could be moderated.
23. Planning authorities should ensure that any
planning permission granted for major developments in these designated
areas should be carried out to high environmental standards through
the application of appropriate conditions where necessary.
This is also repeated in the
Development Management Policies:
Policy NE8: (taken from the
draft Policy Statement for March 2010 entitled "Planning
for a Natural and Healthy Environment") Policy principles
guiding the determination of applications in relation to the natural
environment;
NE8.5 Nationally designated
areas, comprising National Parks, the Broads; and
AONBs, have the highest status
of protection in relation to landscape and scenic beauty. The
conservation of the natural beauty of these designated areas should
be given great weight in planning policies and decisions. In National
Parks and the Broads, their wildlife and cultural heritage should
also be given great weight, whilst in AONBs they are important
considerations. Planning permission for major developments should
be refused except in exceptional circumstances. Major development
proposals should be demonstrated to be in the public interest
and subject to the most rigorous examination. Consideration of
such applications should include an assessment of:
(i) the need for the development, including in
terms of any national considerations, and the impact of permitting
it, or refusing it, upon the local economy;
(ii) the cost of, and scope for, developing elsewhere
outside the designated area, or meeting the need for it in some
other way; and
(iii) any detrimental effect on the environment,
the landscape and recreational opportunities, and the extent to
which that could be moderated.
NE8.6 Planning permissions
granted for major developments in nationally designated areas
should be carried out to high environmental standards through
the use of conditions where necessary.
4. These policies reflect Government policy in
implementation of the statutory protection measures of the provisions
on Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 which reinforced the
protection which already applied to Areas of Outstanding Beauty
(AONB) and accordingly all Government Departments including DfT
and HS2 Ltd, are subject to and are required to comply with this
Public Policy Statement and the principles set out therein. These
therefore applied for the purposes of examining and reporting
on the High Speed Rail proposals and on the alternatives.
5. Despite this, when HS2 Ltd established its
terms of reference, including its absolute requirements,* and
when DfT responded to and accepted those suggested terms of reference,**
PPS7 was never included or referred to, let alone included as
one of the absolute requirements - indeed the other required elements
virtually excluded proper consideration of PPS7—so that
the environmental implications involved in breaching and violating,
in a material way, the protective principles for the AONB, including
in particular those affecting the Chilterns AONB, were never,
or were not able to be, properly considered or taken in to account
in the context of the PPS7 requirements.
6. It is submitted that was not appropriate for
DfT or HS2 to ignore, and not take into account those requirements,
and, even if it might have been considered that HS2 was in the
public interest, it was not appropriate for HS2 Ltd or DfT to
decide that this was the case, as PPS7 requires this to be rigorously
examined and clearly demonstrated and, in any event, also requires
careful examination of the cost of, and scope for, developing
elsewhere outside the designated area, or meeting the need for
it in some other way. It is only Parliament that can decide, after
detailed consideration of the issues and an assessment of the
possible alternatives that, notwithstanding the other factors,
such a project as HS2 is in the national interest.
7. Instead, HS2 Ltd set itself, and DfT had accepted,
a brief which assumed the need for high speed rail as a new line
without reference to the requirements of PPS7, which should itself
have been one of the absolute requirements, but with, instead,
an absolute requirement to provide an interchange with convenient
access to Heathrow* which meant that, for this to be feasible,
there was no realistic alternative but to breach the principles
of PPS7 and cut through some part of the AONB. However there is
now no commitment to create a high speed link to Heathrow as part
of the consultation although a spur link is indicated a possibility.
Furthermore, the value benefit of time saving claimed as justification
for the high speed requirement has now been accepted as not valid
given the increasing use of technology on the trains themselves
during a journey. Thus the business case and claimed cost benefit
put forward by DfT falls away once it was (grudgingly) admitted
that time on the train can be and is now used productively, which
meant that the predication for this preferred route was not relevant,
so that any justification for breach of PPS7, by passing through
the protected AONB, has been undermined and PPS7 now more than
ever calls for detailed consideration of the alternatives.
8. From the outset, there was therefore a conflict
in the HS2 Ltd Brief, which limited and indeed prevented them
from considering the alternatives as required by PPS 7. However,
whilst DfT separately considered this, it was not done in the
context of PPS7 either. And whilst they did nevertheless examine
the alternatives, which in turn offered the ability to address
the incremental passenger traffic problems, particularly those
arising before the HS2 project would be completed, and also addressed
the projected increases over time, all at considerable lower financial
and more importantly considerably less environmental cost, all
these have been subsumed to the DfT requirement for a newly built
HS2 line, notwithstanding the potential financial and environmental
cost benefits offered by the alternatives.
9. It is true that other routes were considered
by HS2 Ltd, but they were only considered by them as alternative
High Speed lines, not in the context of PPS7, but in the context
of the DfT requirements for a new line and the then required element
of a high speed link to Heathrow, notwithstanding that this is
now deferred and not now considered to be critical, so that all
this coloured the alternatives, which were rejected mainly on
financial and other grounds not related to the requirements of
PPS7. In particular therefore neither HS2 Ltd nor DfT fully examined
the real implications and costs involved in moderating the detrimental
effect of the proposals in the AONB. Thus, for example, the question
that appears not to have been asked or addressed is that, if the
new line had to go through the AONB, how would the environmental
cost of tunnelling right through the whole of the AONB, in order
to seek not to breach the principles of PPS7, affect the overall
cost and therefore the consideration of the preferred route as
against the alternatives? Indeed, in this respect, HS2 Ltd have
already admitted that they materially miscalculated the amount
of spoil to be extracted, including because they calculated the
tunnel spoil on the basis of a single bore not a twin tunnel.
All this therefore affects the environmental costs which the TSC
intends to examine.
10. It is submitted that, in this respect, cost
is not the only determining factor, except to the extent that,
if the cost of HS2 through any route is prohibitive, or non commercial,
then it should not be allowed to proceed at all in its currently
projected form, particularly as there are other realistic alternatives
which are themselves capable of further improvement to meet and
address all the projected incremental rail transport requirements
at a considerably lower overall cost.
11. In terms of the accounting for the environmental
cost and implications, there is separately a further concern about
the lack of an environmental impact assessment (EIA) as part of
the consultation exercise, as there are a number of additional
matters which this will address and which are not part of the
current consultation exercise, nor is there currently any relevant
information as to the extent to which this will impact on the
environmental costs The DfT claims that these issue are included
as part of the Appraisal of Sustainability (AoS) as currently
issued, but this Appraisal directs itself much more generally
to the wider range of sustainability issues than the specific
environmental impact issues that an EIA would address and therefore
only in part considers these issues. Thus for example, noise contours
and noise implications (a factor specifically mentioned in subparagraph
6) are not considered in the context of a full environmental impact
assessment, The problem here is that, whilst DfT accepts that
this assessment will be required pursuant to the Environmental
Impact Assessment Directive (85/337/EEC), it only intends to produce
the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) later on, as part of
the Hybrid bill process. This will therefore be well after the
current consultation will have been concluded, so that it will
not have been possible for those consulted to have responded to
or taken that information, and the environmental costs and implications,
into account and these will undoubtedly prove to have been material
factors to have considered as part of the overall consultation,
particularly in relation to the overall environmental costs and
implications. This is of concern to a number of bodies including
the Chilterns AONB and the National Trust, in particular. Indeed
the National Trust has already expressed the view to DfT and HS2
Ltd that, in their view, the Government should stop the consultation
until the detailed environmental assessment and mitigation measures
are made available. The Transport Select Committee is accordingly
requested to make enquiries regarding the EIA and its likely impact
and to consider recommending that the consultation process should
be extended to enable the effect of any EIA and the environmental
costs and implications to be considered as part of the current
consultation process, particularly bearing in mind the commitment
to an produce an EIA in any event.
12. In relation to environmental cost, given
that the Article 2 of the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA)
Directive applies to plans and programmes subject to preparation
at national, regional or local levels and which are required by
legislative, regulatory or administrative provisions, the TSC
is also asked to consider, separately in this respect, whether,
given the regulatory requirements of PPS7 and the statutory protection
of AONB, an SEA is required in any event pursuant to such Directive
and, if so, what additional environmental cost and implications
would result from complying with the requirements of any such
SEA, in addition to the EIA as outlined above. Equally important
is the timing of the same, given, in particular, that DfT have
accepted that, as a minimum an EIA will be required. The problem
is that whilst this EIA will inevitably throw up substantial additional
environmental costs and implications, many of which could well
be critical, the current position is that, apart from the very
limited AoS environmental information, none of this will have
been taken into account or responded to as part of the main public
consultation and, given the now substantially undermined business
case, these factors could well have finally tipped the overall
balance against this current HS2 project.
May 2011
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