Noise nuisance and its impact on quality of life and health

Dani Fiumicelli - Technical Director

It is often perceived that the control of noise nuisance is an issue which sits outside the normal planning process. However, when considering new development (either noise generating or sensitive to noise) nuisance needs to be actively considered particularly as legal precedent means that there is no legal defence of claiming the noisy land use was there first. Therefore, the potential to cause noise nuisance by emitting noise or bringing receptors to an existing noise source are legitimate grounds to refuse planning permission.  In turn it follows that it is in the interests of developers of both noise generating and noise sensitive development to identify and minimise any risks to their schemes due to noise nuisance.

There is general agreement that nuisance is incapable of an exact quantified definition.  But this flexibility is a key strength for the legislation, as the core principles of nuisance can be applied to almost any situation. This enables a single legal concept and simple short legislative measures to apply to a wide range of situations and to be ready to tackle unforeseen and unforeseeable problems.

Subjectivity

The negative side of nuisance is that there is no clearly defined means of measuring it. It is often said to be subjective and those accused of nuisance can feel aggrieved that they have no clearly defined simple benchmark, like a speed limit, that can be used to avoid being subject to legal action or having permission for a development withheld.  But in fact, whilst nuisance can be assessed qualitatively, it is an objective standard e.g. it only protects the ordinary reasonable use of land and those of normal sensitivity; it reflects the nature and character of a particular locality and minor infractions cannot be a nuisance. In presenting a nuisance case to a court, defending accusations of nuisance or appraising the risk that nuisance might arise, there is therefore a role for quantified measurable evidence. For example, to support the argument that the noise was likely to be having an effect that the ordinary person would find hard to tolerate; or, going the other way, to demonstrate that the noise was unlikely to have been intolerable to an ordinary person.

Noise sensitive receptors and future occupiers

As well as considering noise nuisance, planning policy means that developers of noise generating and noise sensitive development need to consider the impacts of noise from their scheme on the quality of life and health of existing noise sensitive receptors; and the impact of existing noise sources on the quality of life and health of future occupiers of their schemes.  The standard here is different to nuisance; and normally the standards applied for planning purposes will avoid nuisance. Analogous to nuisance, current noise and planning policy doesn’t provide any detailed decibel based noise limits; instead qualitatively defined concepts such as Lowest Observed Adverse Effect Level and Significant Observed Adverse Effect Level apply. The means the practitioner has to carefully select and justify the guidelines and noise limits they use to assess a scheme on case by case basis.

Practical advice to resolve noise nuisance risks

Temple has a long history of dealing with noise nuisances including being technical advisers to the Government on nuisance policy and advising many local authorities and those accused of being responsible for nuisance in individual cases. Temple also has a comprehensive track record of advising developers on noise generating and noise sensitive development in order to secure planning permission or parliamentary approval of a scheme. This all puts Temple at the forefront when it comes to the translation of legislation and policy into clear and concise practical guidance and advice aimed at identifying ad minimising noise risks to a scheme.

For more information on Temple's Acoustics services, please contact Dani Fiumicelli at dani.fiumicelli@templegroup.co.uk, alternatively contact Simon Perry at simon.perry@templegroup.co.uk.

Transport: the Developer’s Master Key

James While - Account Director

Recently, I attended a lively debate delivered by Bill Hughes of Legal and General Property Fund. An astute leader within our industry, Bill was passionate about long-term investment and long-term return. He was asked, from the floor; "what, for you, is the absolute key to unlock the latent potential of any given urban site?"

The answer was warming "It’s all about having a sustainable and effective transport infrastructure," he opined. "That gives me long term surety of growth and the ability to maintain and expand the fortunes of the development."

Wise words indeed, but is this a model that works well in the confined spaces of the UK? The method of using private landowners to build infrastructure at a loss to open up land for development is not a new phenomenon. In 1912 private landowners in over 10 US cities built inter-urban rail lines to open up land for development that generated enormous profits, which easily covered investment and operating costs (Source UC Berkeley ITS). This is a process that is heavily used in parts of Asia, but does it work in the UK and can the increase in land values, due to improved infrastructure, be enough to pay for the cost of installing and maintaining the infrastructure?

It is a paradoxical question; indeed the classic chicken and egg conundrum. However, evidentially, the W12 area of London has shown increases in property prices in excess of 28% year on year from 2005 - 2014 (source: Hometrack). Energised by the Shepherd’s Bush Transport exchange and catalysed by the inward investment of Westfield, that enclave of West London life is arguably THE place to be right now, a classic lesson in speculative transport investment netting huge development benefit.

And let’s not denude the strategic planning that showed the foresight to make this work. Duncan Bower, Westfield’s Development Director, was at pains to point out that anything other than a robust public transport system would have created road havoc within Shepherd’s Bush and he proudly points out that 81.3% of all Westfield visitors don’t come by car.

However, is enough being done to catalyse further development?

There are three key questions we need to consider:

1. Should the government or developers fund infrastructure on a site prior to developing houses, so that the infrastructure is set up to facilitate the maximum rate of house building?
2. The Mayoral CIL and LA CIL goes someway to pay for the cost of infrastructure, but is it enough - do landowners need to take more responsibility to ensure that the infrastructure is in place before new properties are built?
3. Can a finance model of providing a developer with an in-kind contribution in the form of a land grant, giving the developer exclusive development rights for the land above and adjacent to the station it has provided, work in the cities of the UK?

We can’t answer those questions ourselves, but they are all key considerations for any developer working within the geographical confines and financial constraints of the UK’s major cities. The absolute key is a joined up approach; thinking, planning, infrastructure, development and, most importantly, common purpose. Only then can we see more of the successes that Bill Hughes has delivered across the Legal and General Portfolio and the community impact of Westfield’s sensational vision for West London.

For more information on Temple's Planning services, please contact Mark Furlonger at mark.furlonger@templegroup.co.uk, alternatively contact James While at james.while@templegroup.co.uk

What constitutes a ‘world city’?

Emma Devenport - Consultant

To mark the UN Habitat World Cities Day on 31^st October, Temple staff held a lunchtime discussion around the topic of what makes a world city and the challenges world cities face. Before the session, when I imagined a world city, I’d thought of it as one that is diverse, connected and a major hub for financial and business activity such as London, New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo. However, I now question whether a world city should be largely defined based on trade and economic terms alone; or whether a stronger emphasis on social and environmental factors is needed? And if a large city (by population and GDP) is multi-cultural and diverse, does that make it a ‘world city'?

There are various indices of liveable cities with The Economist’s ‘liveability index’ being one of the most widely recognised. The liveability index ranks cities based on healthcare, safety, education, infrastructure and environment, factors that should also be accounted for when defining a world city. The Economist ranks eight of the ten most liveable cities to be in Australia, Canada and New Zealand, with the remaining two in Europe (Vienna and Helsinki). The index tends to rank higher for ‘mid-sized cities in wealthier countries with a relatively low population density’. This may explain why densely populated cities such as London and New York, or cities within developing countries such as Delhi and Rio de Janeiro don’t necessarily get a mention. This alone suggests that those ‘world cities’ should focus on improving their liveability to bring better quality of life to their populations.

It is clear that cities within developing countries face bigger challenges, particularly where there are large disparities between rich and poor, compared to those in the developed world. On World Cities Day UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, identified the need for tackling common challenges that cities across the world face, including congestion, inadequate housing, lack of access to healthcare and other basic services and an increasing lack of space, through ‘strengthening resilience, ensuring basic services and designing safe public streets and spaces’. The World Health Organisation (WHO) expects global urban population to grow by approximately 1.84% per year between 2015 – 2020. As the world’s population is increasingly becoming city-dwelling, there is a clear need to start solving the real challenges that Ban Ki-moon identified and improve the liveability of cities particularly through innovation and technology.

The concept of ‘smart cities’ focuses on the need for the right technology and good city governance to improve everything from infrastructure to healthcare. Without continued innovation, technological improvements, and appropriate planning and design, cities will struggle to remain world cities. The challenge is to deliver this transition using technology and innovation to improve liveability and ensure increased resourced efficiency to improve quality of life in even the most densely populated cities.

Improving our understanding of community engagement on infrastructure projects

Jenny Stafford - Principal Consultant

At Temple, we believe engaging early with stakeholders to identify local benefits reduces the cost of implementing infrastructure projects, sometimes quite significantly. Our approach is to involve communities in decision making and ensuring local benefit as far as possible (rather than simply informing or consulting on proposals).

We presented some of our thinking about this at a recent CIRIA event on community engagement on infrastructure projects. One of the tools we use is our Controversy-Local Benefit matrix for infrastructure projects, see below. The matrix provides a broad categorisation of projects by levels of controversy and local benefit and makes it easy to see why more controversial projects, either locally or nationally, and those bringing low levels of local benefit are challenging in terms of community engagement. Recognising this, finding ways to reduce impacts – sometimes through the process of considering different options – and increase local benefit (see graph below), helps move projects towards the top left quadrant i.e. those that are more straightforward to engage on.

 Controversy-Local Benefit Matrix. The position of example projects in the matrix reflects Temple’s views but the precise location of the projects in a quadrant or between quadrants is open to debate.

Good engagement can increase benefit and reduce controversy 

Another key message at our CIRIA event was the wide variety of reasons why engaging early adds value: early community engagement builds trust, eases the process overall and reduces costs. This front loading of engagement is the same principle as that adopted by the BREEAM Communities assessment process which demonstrates the importance of early engagement in informing design. It is less expensive to engage early with the costs of doing so increasing during the development process, particularly during the approval or consents stage when there may be legal costs to such engagement and less opportunity to make changes which reduce impacts or increase benefit. 

The International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) identifies a spectrum of participation or engagement ranging from informing and consulting with the public to involving, collaborating or empowering. Use of approaches and techniques further along the spectrum see greater levels of involvement and participation and, as a result, increasing levels of public impact and likely benefit.  At its simplest therefore, the IAP2 spectrum suggests that finding ways to better involve the community will be a more effective way of ensuring local benefit and gaining acceptance.  

A final key point about controversial projects is something that may surprise many technical specialists. It might be anticipated that it is important to share technical details when undertaking public consultation on controversial projects. However, what is most important is being able to relate to the views of individuals or empathising, gaining their trust and demonstrating commitment to listening to their views, according to work done by Vince Covello on risk communication. These factors are far more important than sharing their technical expertise about the project itself. In lower concern situations – or less controversial projects - sharing this technical expertise has a greater role to play, see below. 

Temple Group is hosting the IAP2 Foundations in Public Participation course in London, 1-5 December. Click here to find out more and register.

Wild Development - A talk by Jon Riley of The Ecology Consultancy

Jonathan Say, Consultant

On the 15^th of October 2014 Jon Riley, of Temple’s sister company The Ecology Consultancy (TEC), gave an interesting and informative briefing on wildlife and development.

The talk began by looking at construction impacts on wildlife. TEC have significant experience in this area through their work on projects like the construction of the A120 in Essex, the Channel Tunnel Rail Link and the East London Line (Underground and Overground). Jon shared his wealth of insights on issues such as direct habitat and species loss, fragmentation, disturbance, introduction of invasive species and landscape design and management.

Jon covered the major legislation relating to ecological assessment, an area that TEC has extensive expertise in, given their involvement as expert witness for projects like the Local Plans for the London Borough of Lewisham and the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea. This section was peppered with interesting examples of protected sites and species related to the many projects Jon has been involved with. I was saddened to hear of the decline of the UK and European protected white-clawed crayfish (Austropotamobius pallipes) in the south east due to invasive species introduction and associated diseases (crayfish plague). It highlighted the great importance of using ecological experts to limit the impact of major developments, as the removal of a single species can have huge impacts to wider ecosystems. The example of the decline of bumble bees in the UK, due to impacts such as changes in agricultural technique, shows the potential implications to human life of a single species loss http://bumblebeeconservation.org/.

The presentation illustrated both UK and European legislation, the interrelation with the UK planning system and covered the specialist area of protected species licencing and ecological surveying which is a discipline in which TEC are greatly involved. For example, on HS2 Phase 1 Environmental Impact Assessment (London to West Midlands) TEC have undertaken over 600 surveys to date this year!

Jon highlighted the potential cost of getting it wrong. A successful prosecution for a wildlife offence may lead to a £5000 fine or six months’ imprisonment per offence, which in the case of a bat roost is clearly a substantial impact to any project. This again highlights the importance for developers to utilise competent ecological consultants like TEC in order to avoid these impacts.

Finally, Jon covered the fascinating area of creative ecology or habitat enhancement and how projects can have positive ecological benefit if competent ecologists are engaged to plan out these potential habitats. This covered green roofs, green walls, integrated nesting sites, vertical beaches (very relevant to enhancement along the Thames wall), green bridges, grassland creation and much more. TEC, together with our associated company the Green Roof Consultancy (GRC), are leaders in the field of habitat creation. Notable examples include Canary Wharf’s green roof strategy and Barclays Headquarters in London. GRC were the authors of the Greater London Authority’s ‘Living Roofs and Walls – the technical report to support the new London plan’.

Clearly TEC are leaders in the field of ecological assessment, and together with Temple and the Green Roof Consultancy, we can offer a range of high-level expertise in environmental and ecological consultancy, planning advice and habitat creation relevant to wildlife and development.

Proportionate EIA – a Temple approach

Tom Smeeton - Principal Consultant/ Peter George - Technical Director

Research by IEMA has indicated that the main text of many environmental statements run to more than 350 pages, while those relating to nationally significant infrastructure projects are often nearer double that figure. Furthermore, EIA can often be seen as a regulatory hurdle required for development consent rather than a vehicle to achieve truly sustainable design. So how can proportionality be achieved at key stages of the environmental impact assessment (EIA) process and what are the perceived barriers to delivering an effective, concise and proportionate EIA?

In our recently published article in the environmentalist, Pete George and I seek to answer some of these questions. Some of the key themes are summarised below.

                                                   

Many EIA environmental statements (ESs) have become large, information repositories and feedback from stakeholders reveals that this can lead to a perception of impenetrability which can often make them inaccessible to the reader. Reasons for the ever-expanding ESs seem to vary but can include:

• the fear of challenge or the risk of litigation;
• a temptation to scope in topics with little consideration of whether the anticipated impacts are significant;
• legal teams insisting an expanded scope;
• a normal or traditional approach scoping in the environmental topics normally associated with a development rather than the specifics of what being proposed;
• inflexible guidance documents and a lack of professional judgement; and
• failing to recognise that scoping is a dynamic process which should be continually reviewed.

As a result many ESs become less effective at communicating a clear, concise message to inform interested stakeholders and decision makers. It is accepted that the non-technical summary (NTS) should be the first point of contact for many stakeholders (technical or otherwise) but even NTSs can become a listing exercise of significant effects with little rationale given for the conclusion.

Effective scoping has to underpin a proportionate approach to EIA, whilst also increasing efficiency and reducing the potential for unnecessary work and creating value for our clients.

So what about proportionality in the application of design and mitigation? The design and mitigation response should also be proportionate and based on the scale of anticipated impact to effectively mitigate, without entailing excessive costs. In our experience an iterative approach using emerging results of the assessment backed up with experienced professional judgement has delivered demonstrable value and efficiencies whilst also achieving successful consent and a more robust sustainable design for our clients.

The traditional model is to undertake EIA at key points in the design – for example, when the design is sufficiently developed to understand the effects of the development on the environment. The design needs to be sufficiently “fixed” for its impact to be assessed effectively. However, this approach can result in the mitigation being “shoe-horned” into an advanced and inflexible design.

We have found a more integrated approach, which embeds the environment professional in the design team is more beneficial. This approach can truly integrate the initial environmental findings and the approach to mitigation into the design. In this way, environmental assessment is not viewed as a process that merely reports back at the end of the process, rather, EIA is considered as a fully integrated and iterative process that is interdependent with the evolution of the design.

The EIA coordinator has a central role in the development cycle and they must be able to communicate effectively with stakeholders, the design and wider project teams. This relationship is crucial to avoid and reduce the project’s effects on the environment, whilst also ensuring that the mitigation response is proportionate and integrated into the design.

The benefits of having an embedded EIA coordinator in the core development project team, include:

• better communication within the project team of environmental impacts;
• better understanding of the key issues relating to the environment;
• design management – a thorough understanding of the environmental implications of design decisions;
• design advice – an ability to influence the design and advise on emerging results of the assessment; and
• impartiality – an ability to challenge conventional thinking or status quo design assumptions.

We have found this approach has delivered demonstrable value to our clients whilst also gaining consent and successful outcomes for their developments.

The implementation of the new EIA Directive has a requirement for the EIA manager or coordinator to be an “appropriate person”. Whilst it is uncertain how this will be interpreted or defined, Temple’s EIA coordinators are experienced professionals with relevant professional qualifications – such as registered EIA practitioners, MIEMA and Chartered Environmentalists.  Temple is also one of the founding members of the IEMA Quality Mark registration. As such, Temple is well-placed to respond effectively to the changes associated with the implementation of the new Directive whilst also delivering consistently successful outcomes for our clients.

The full article can be found on the following link can be found here. N.B. please note you will need to be an IEMA member with a username and password to access the article. Alternatively, you can take a free trial.

For further information on how Temple can successfully deliver EIA in relation to your development opportunities please contact the below:-

Tom Smeeton – Principal EIA Consultant thomas.smeeton@templegroup.co.uk  02073943700

Peter George – Technical Director peter.george@templegroup.co.uk 02073943700

Understanding people helps deliver technology benefits

Martin Gibson - Head of Operations

As those of you who have known me for a while will know, I have a phrase “it’s the soft stuff that’s hard”. It is quite easy to make a case for using technology. You can find the costs and calculate the payback time to make a credible case. When it comes to changing behaviour, however, things get a lot trickier. It is hard to calculate the costs of changing behaviour or the outcomes from doing so. It is also a long and complex process to change people’s behaviour.

In the light of these difficulties, we in business often simply opt for technology solutions and ignore the behavioural side of things. A recent study shows that the same seems to be true for the academic research community. Having an interest in all things sustainable, my eye was caught by the article ‘Energy studies need social science’ by Benjamin K. Sovacool (Nature 13 July 2014, Vol 511, p529).

The article points out that to secure a low-carbon future, we need to alter both technologies and behaviour. However, energy research literature focusses predominantly on technological solutions. Most articles (85%) focus on energy production systems. Behaviour and energy demand was investigated in less than 3% of the 4,444 articles covered in the research.

Sovacool makes a strong argument that the focus on technology means that engineers and economists are ignoring behavioural aspects of energy use and therefore miscasting decision-making and action. He believes that researchers in the energy field need to learn from health and agriculture by bringing together social and physical scientists. He notes four worrisome trends in energy research:

• Undervaluation of the influence of the social dimension;
• A bias towards science, engineering and economics over social sciences and humanities;
• A lack of interdisciplinary collaboration; and
• Under-representation of female and minority group authors.

These findings have strong parallels in the business community. Many business people operate in silos: people keep things within their department when it would be better to work with others across or outside the company. Although there are some notable exceptions to this and a trend towards more collaborative working, silos still dominate. It will take some time before the benefits of collaboration that should arise from using approaches such as those in BS 11000 become commonplace.

For those of us working towards more sustainable business, the message is clear: don’t get stuck in silos. There is a need to make sure that technological solutions are balanced with social and behaviours ones. Technology will open up opportunities but we need to understand human behaviour to deliver them. If we are to deliver on sustainability, we need to consider the complex interactions between technology and the people that use and benefit from it.