Approval under the Flood Risk Management (Scotland) Act 2009
The Scheme is being advanced by East Lothian Council under the Flood Risk Management (Scotland) Act 2009 (the FRM) and its Regulations. This legislation clearly defines the processes to be followed in preparing, publishing and thereafter the approval of a scheme.
Once a Scheme is approved under the FRM, its Deemed Planning Permission is granted by the Scottish Minister – again under the processes defined in the FRM and its Regulations.
The Scheme is not yet approved.
The FRM and its Regulations also clearly define the approach to an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). At this point the project team has achieved an Environmental Screening which confirmed that the Scheme would require and EIA. It has also achieved an Environmental Scoping and thus the EIA preparation has commenced against the requirements defined by this scoping exercise. The EIA is one part of the Scheme documents that are published as part of the approvals process.
The process to achieve approval under the FRM will only commence once the Outline Design has been developed (through a consultative process as detailed elsewhere in this website), and East Lothian Council have given permission to publish the Scheme.
It is currently estimated that the formal approvals process will not commence until late 2022.
Other Scheme Approvals
There are many other authorisations or licences that the Scheme may require before it could commence its delivery stages – i.e. construction. At this point it is not possible to definitively confirm which other approvals will be required, however the following can reasonably be assumed:
- That at least one (and maybe more than one) ‘CAR Licence’ will be required for any works in the river water under the Water Environment (Controlled Activities) (Scotland) Regulations 2011;
- That there will be requirements under the Reservoirs (Scotland) Act 2011 related to the preferred option to modify the existing Scottish Water reservoirs in the catchment;
- That an ‘Appropriate Assessment’ will be required under the Habitat Regulations which is known as a Habitat Regulations Assessment (HRA);
- That a ‘Marine Licence’ will be required for any works on the coastal foreshore under the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010.
This list is not considered to be exhaustive, and is provide only to illustrate the complexity of the many legislative inputs and thereafter approvals to FRM approval that may be required.
Once the Outline Design begins to shape and has been consulted on, and thereby after the next Public Exhibition in Spring 2022, this page will be updated.