Environmental Outcomes Reports and the future of EIA

Environmental Outcomes Reports are a power, not yet a regime. Part 6 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 lets the Secretary of State make regulations that specify environmental outcomes and require a report assessing how far a proposed consent or plan would affect their delivery. Until those regulations are made and brought into force for a given consent type, the Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) Regulations 2017 continue to govern environmental impact assessment in England. This describes the position as at September 2026, and it is one to verify rather than assume.

That is the answer developers need before scoping a major scheme. The detail matters because the two approaches ask different questions, and a project scoped under one does not automatically satisfy the other.

What Part 6 of the 2023 Act provides for

The Act does not itself create Environmental Outcomes Reports. It creates the machinery to create them.

The Secretary of State may specify outcomes relating to the environment by regulations. Those regulations may then require that, before a relevant consent is granted or a relevant plan adopted, a report is prepared assessing the extent to which the proposal would affect delivery of the specified outcomes, setting out proposed mitigation, and dealing with monitoring afterwards. The powers reach both project-level assessment and plan-level assessment, so strategic environmental assessment is within scope alongside environmental impact assessment.

Two features distinguish the model. Outcomes are set nationally and in advance, rather than emerging case by case through scoping. And monitoring after consent is built into the framework rather than added by condition, which is a real change in emphasis for anyone who has watched mitigation commitments fade after implementation.

How outcomes based assessment would differ

An Environmental Statement under the 2017 Regulations describes likely significant effects on specified factors, and its length is driven by the scoping opinion and by the applicant's appetite for risk. The result is documents running to thousands of pages, most of which nobody reads.

An outcomes based report would instead measure a proposal against a defined set of outcomes and report the extent to which it delivers or undermines each. In principle that produces shorter documents, comparable data across schemes, and a clearer basis for deciding what mitigation is proportionate.

The open questions are practical rather than conceptual. How outcomes will be defined in enough detail to be assessable. Whether indicators will be measurable at project scale. And how the report will handle effects that matter locally but sit outside any specified outcome, which is the risk practitioners raise most often.

What would happen to the 2017 Regulations

The Act gives power to amend or repeal existing environmental assessment legislation as part of introducing the new regime. It does not repeal anything by itself.

So the 2017 Regulations remain the operative regime for town and country planning consents until regulations under Part 6 say otherwise, and any transition is likely to be staged by consent type rather than switched on everywhere at once. Anyone scoping a scheme should check the current text of the 2017 Regulations on legislation.gov.uk, and check whether Part 6 regulations have been made covering their consent type, before deciding which route applies. That is a two-minute check and it prevents an expensive misstep.

Screening and scoping thresholds in Schedules 1 and 2 to the 2017 Regulations are unchanged by the Act. A scheme that needs an Environmental Impact Assessment today still needs one, and the Environmental Statement must be prepared by competent experts as those Regulations require. A drafted report is a starting point for that professional, not a substitute for them.

Non regression and what it constrains

The Act includes a duty intended to stop the new regime weakening environmental protection. In broad terms, regulations may only be made where the Secretary of State is satisfied that the overall level of environmental protection will not be reduced compared with what applied before.

Read that as a constraint on the shape of the outcomes rather than a guarantee about any individual site. It operates at the level of the regime as a whole, and it does not promise that a particular receptor will be assessed the way it is today. Objectors have been quick to make that point, and applicants should expect the argument to surface at inquiry wherever an outcomes based report is thinner than the Environmental Statement it replaced.

Consultation and the regulation making position

Government consulted on the approach in 2023, covering how outcomes might be set, how reports would work for plans and projects, and how transition would be handled. Regulations under these powers are subject to their own consultation and parliamentary process, which is why the position changes by statutory instrument rather than by press notice.

The practical consequence is that announcements are not commencement. A written ministerial statement setting out an intention changes nothing about what you have to submit next month. Check the made and in-force position on legislation.gov.uk, and follow the reform through the planning law updates timeline rather than relying on summaries written when the Act received Royal Assent.

This is the same discipline that applies to any staged reform, and the pattern will be familiar to anyone who tracked the phased April 2024 biodiversity commencement for small sites.

What applicants should assume today

Work to the 2017 Regulations. Request a screening opinion where the development falls within Schedule 2 and the thresholds are met or the site is in a sensitive area. Take a scoping opinion where the assessment is likely to be contested, because a written scoping opinion remains the best protection against a late request for further information.

Build the evidence base so it survives a change of framework. Baseline surveys, monitoring data and quantified effects transfer between regimes. Narrative chapters written to fill a template do not.

Keep an eye on how policy documents change alongside the procedural rules, because the two move together and a reissued framework can shift the weight given to assessment findings, as set out in the note on what changes when the NPPF is re-issued.

Watching the commencement position

Three sources answer the question reliably. The Act's own commencement information on legislation.gov.uk. Any statutory instrument made under Part 6. And the Planning Practice Guidance chapter on environmental impact assessment, which is updated when the underlying rules change.

Set a reminder to check before each major scoping exercise rather than relying on memory. Reform of this kind arrives quietly, in a schedule to an instrument, months after the headlines.

To see which environmental documents a site is likely to need under the rules in force now, enter your postcode on PlanScope and work through the guided questions.

This is general guidance, not legal advice, so check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it. For specialist technical reports, qualified professional input may be required. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.