ABSTRACT
Less than a year after the in troduction o f the Town and C ountry P lanning (Assessment o f Environm ental Effects) Regulations 1988 Steven Mertz (1989) posed the no t unreasonable question: ‘T he E uropean Econom ic C om m unity Directive on environm ental assessments: how will it affect U nited Kingdom developers?’1. E ight years and over 2000 environm ental assessments on, it seems appropria te to look again at tha t question and to ask now: w hat has been the effect o f the environm ental im pact assessment regulations on the UK’s land use p lann ing system? T he in ten tion o f this book is to provide a response to tha t question by focusing on the experience o f practitioners in the im plem entation o f the UK’s Environm ental Im pact Assessment process.
