News: Environment Agency wants condition attached to 75-home plan

The Environment Agency has asked for a condition to be attached to any permission for the 75-home planning application.

They want to protect the Chilbolton Supersite, located at the Observatory, from air pollution from the site during construction.

Chilbolton is one of three air quality supersites in the UK, making an extensive range of measurements. This includes particulates, nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide and ozone. It is designated a “Rural Background” site and fulfils the UK’s obligations under Air Quality Standards legislation.

The EA’s consultation response explains why Chilbolton was chosen for this role:

Stability of the surrounding land use; and hence its formal classification as a rural background monitoring site. The legislation dictates rural sites have to be at locations away from significant sources of air pollution and built-up areas. The sampling point must not be influenced by agglomerations or industrial sites in its vicinity, i.e. closer than five kilometres

They are concerned that the construction phase of the 75-home development “is likely to introduce dust, particulate emissions, increased vehicle movements, and non-road mobile machinery in close proximity to the monitoring site”. This risks the “quality and continuity of recorded data”

To mitigate this, they require that a Construction Environmental Management Plan is submitted by the applicant including:

• Details of wheel washing facilities
• Details of Dust suppression measures to minimise site particulate emissions
• Requirement to liaise with Environment Agency prior to key consutrction dates

Their submission also contains a warning about future development, saying:

Continued extensive development could change the emissions profile around the site in a way that is inconsistent with its established rural background role and could compromise the integrity of a nationally significant dataset. If those characteristics are eroded, the usefulness of the site may be diminished without any practical opportunity to relocate or replicate it elsewhere.

Given this, it is interesting to note that Test Valley Farm was not subject to a similar condition for its planning permission.

Data from the Chilbolton Supersite is monitored and reported on hourly. It also contributes to the Automatic Urban and Rural Network, the UK’s main network used for compliance reporting against the Ambient Air Quality Directives.