Policy, plan, and programme environmental assessment in England, the Netherlands, and Germany: practice and prospects

An analysis of existing (broadly defined) strategic environmental assessments (SEAs) in the spatial/land-use and transport sectors in England, the Netherlands, and Germany concludes that substantial practice exists and that three assessment types can be distinguished, each associated with distinct methodological tasks. By utilising existing terminology, these can be labelled policy-SEA, plan-SEA, and programme-SEA. It appears from current practice that, in order best to meet performance criteria derived from the SEA literature, these three types of SEA should be applied within a tiered system. Although the recently adopted EC SEA Directive includes provisions for the SEA of plans and programmes, the analysis of current assessment practice indicates that consideration should be given to extending the formal requirements to cover the SEA of policies as certain tasks are probably better dealt with in policy-SEA than in plan-SEA or programme-SEA.