English Marine Plan Sustainability Support

Bamburgh Castle, Northumbria. Part of the North East inshore marine plan area.

Bamburgh Castle, Northumbria. Part of the North East inshore marine plan area.

Contact

Emma Jones

Managing Consultant
T: +44 7921 058390

Bram Miller

Technical Director, Strategic Sustainability Consulting
M: +44 7436 545 408

Services we provided

The Marine Management Organisation (MMO) is currently preparing marine plans for England including inshore and offshore areas in the north-east, north-west and south-west, as well as the south-east inshore area. The plans will set out how the UK marine policy statement will be implemented in these areas.

Leading a consortium of consultancies
The MMO engaged Ramboll to produce a sustainability appraisal scoping report for seven of their inshore and offshore marine plans covering a large proportion of English waters.

Leading a consortium of consultancies, we provided project leadership and key technical skills to produce a sustainability appraisal scoping report to feed in to the development of these marine plans in an ambitious 6-month timeframe.

Marine plans and sustainability
The purpose of the sustainability appraisal is to assess the potential impacts of the plans on the marine environment over a 20 year period, setting out the sustainability effects of the marine plans to ensure more transparent decisions.

It is also a requirement of the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 and, under EU law, must incorporate the requirements of the Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive.

The scoping stage defines what is important for sustainability, ensuring that the assessment can be focused on the issues that are most significant in each area.

A new approach
Ramboll focused on the collection of key data and employed a novel approach to enable easy interpretation by key stakeholders, including the public.

We provided a fully searchable baseline database, produced visually appealing report cards for each issue and generated a combined sustainability appraisal scoping report encompassing all seven plans. The information provided a solid foundation that the MMO is now using to build the evidence base for the plan-making process.

Blogging for the government
Stakeholder engagement demanded an open and transparent process. We engaged directly with stakeholders, which included a blog written for the government’s website.

Ramboll has also worked with the MMO on the sustainability appraisal of the South marine plans.

Ramboll Group A/S

Ramboll Group A/S
Hannemanns Allé 53
DK-2300 Copenhagen S
Denmark
Tel:+45 5161 1000
Fax:+45 5161 1001

Danish CVR numbers

Danish CVR numbers

Ramboll Group
10160669

Rambøll Danmark
35128417

Ramboll Energy
35128417

Rambøll Management Consulting
60997918

Other sites

Other sites