Public Health England have produced a guide to help Directors of Public Health and local public health teams engage in the Environmental Impact Assessment process. Recent changes to the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) regulations clarify that ‘population and human health’ is a topic that should be considered when assessing the impact of large scale development and infrastructure projects.
There is an opportunity for public health professionals to be more engaged in the process from the screening and scoping stages onwards, and to work closely with planners and EIA professionals. It is also important for local public health professionals to work with environmental health officers when engaging in the EIA process and for the relationship between EIA and Health Impact Assessment (HIA) to be clarified, as HIA involves a wider assessment of health issues and impacts. At a national level, Public Health England has a role to comment on scoping reports and Environmental Statements linked to nationally significant infrastructure projects.
The briefing can be found here.