Effective Non-Technical Summaries for Environmental Impact Assessment

Lead author of IEMA's latest publication 'Effective Non-Technical Summaries for Environmental Impact Assessment', Naushad Tahsildar discusses the importance of a Non-Technical Summary for EIA and the key role it plays for EIA practitioners.

It has been interesting to see how Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) in the UK (and internationally) have evolved in the last decade and while we have seen EIAs and associated Environmental Statements (ESs) becoming bigger and more complex, conveying the key findings of an EIA in a clear and concise format for the Non-Technical Summary (NTS) has become ever harder and challenging. IEMA has been a consistent supporter of increasing stakeholder engagement and public participation in environmental assessment. Most recently, IEMA’s response to government consultations on the future of the environmental assessment regime in England and Northern Ireland has called for expanded and improved provisions that provide access to information, public participation in decision-making and access to justice in environmental matters. This new NTS guidance reaffirms IEMA’s view that improving the quality, accessibility and functionality of NTS will make an important contribution to improving access to environmental assessment reporting for the wider public.

I am sure all EIA practitioners would agree on the importance of the NTS reports and the significant role the NTS plays to convey the key findings of an ES. I also believe this is ‘the one document’ within the ES that has the flexibility and potential to use a lot of creativity in providing an outcome that succinctly captures the essence of the ES. However, I am afraid we rarely see exemplary examples of NTS and ‘out of box’ thinking and there are many reasons for this and one key reason probably is the absence of guidance. Limited guidance on NTS over the years has resulted in practitioners taking a cautious approach and therefore we don’t see many practitioners exploring various options of presenting NTS.

In 2012, IEMA provided guidance on ‘effective non-technical summaries for EIA’ as an e-brief with an aim to improve the quality of NTS in EIA practice. I am really pleased to see this updated NTS advice note published providing further guidance on effective NTS.

The document provides guidance in four areas;

• Content required within the NTS;
• Key skills and competencies the team responsible for producing the NTS should have;
• Accessibility of the NTS and what should be considered to make the document accessible; and
• Key consideration for the presentation of NTS.

The guidance also provides how the future of NTS will be within the Digital EIA and ongoing initiatives and has a summary checklist that should be completed when developing a NTS to ensure it is created in line with the best practice measures outlined in the guidance.

Hopefully this guidance will provide the clarity , confidence and much needed impetus for practitioners to take the bold steps in creating high quality and engaging NTS reports.

Download your copy of the guidance here.