The Environment

Environmental Considerations

As part of the planning process, Chorley Borough Council commissioned in 2001 the production of an Environmental Statement in accordance with the Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) (England and Wales) Regulations 1999 [1]. This Environmental Statement is available from the Chorley Borough Council website [2].

The assessment identifies the effects the scheme will have on the environment and people in the neighbourhood. Both benefits and adverse impacts were taken into account in the assessment process, which was carried out alongside the engineering design studies. The advantage of this was that when adverse impacts were identified measures to avoid or minimise them could be put into the design process.

The route corridor crosses ancient and secondary woodland and scrub habitats, open amenity grasslands, small areas of pasture grassland and other unmanaged grassland and tall herb habitats. There is no agricultural land affected by the scheme and although the road route affects the Duxbury Woods Biological Heritage Site the overall impact is minor after taking account of mitigation measures.

A range of mitigating proposals form part of the scheme and will be subject to re-survey and monitoring, including:

Use of low noise road surfacing materials and noise attenuation barriers to minimise noise intrusion;
Road alignment designed to be in cutting in areas close to the main housing areas and the school, together with extensive screen planting and screening embankment to reduce visual impact;
Salvage and translocation of ancient woodland soils, selected trees and shrubs, including endemic bramble species;
New native woodland planting;
Nature conservation and access management plan for Duxbury Woods Biological Heritage Site;
Wetland area providing silt pond and reed bed water treatment measures for road surface drainage;
New pond and amphibian habitat creation, along with existing pond management;
Amphibian tunnels to be provided beneath the new road;
New artificial bat roosts;
Artificial Dipper nest sites.

Useful links

Please note that views expressed by external websites may not be those held by the Lancashire County Council. Lancashire County Council accepts no responsibility for any material contained on these sites.

Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) (England and Wales) Regulations 1999 (Office of Public Sector Information)
Planning Application and Environmental Statement (Chorley Borough Council)