On Thursday 23rd June, Aberdeen Football Club lodged with Aberdeen City Council, a formal Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) screening opinion request. This is a procedural matter under the provisions of the Environmental Impact Assessment (Scotland) Regulations 2011. The purpose of this procedure is to allow the planning authority (Aberdeen City Council) to provide a potential developer or applicant with a formal decision on whether their planning application would need to be accompanied by an EIA.
When such a request is made, the planning authority has 21 days to issue a formal decision. Aberdeen City Council officers are currently considering the information provided by Aberdeen Football Club and a decision will be made within the prescribed period on whether an EIA will be required. There is no public consultation or any role for the public in this process.
The next stage of the process should see Aberdeen Football Club lodging a Proposal of Application Notice for the proposed stadium and training facilities. For this type of development, such a notice must be submitted to the planning authority at least 12 weeks before a planning application can be lodged. The Proposal of Application Notice will set out the public consultation events/exhibitions and consultation with local community councils and Elected Members. When a planning application is subsequently lodged with the City Council, it will be necessary for the applicants to include a Pre-Application Consultation Report which should explain how issues raised during the consultation have been addressed and if such issues have not been addressed, why that is the case.
Aberdeen City Council has no role in the above consultation and thus the City Council cannot accept or take in to account any comments on the proposed stadium development made by the public arising from the consultation. Once a planning application has been lodged, formal consultation on the stadium proposal will take place. It is only at this time that the public should submit written representations to the City Council. All such representations will then be taken in to account in the assessment and determination of the planning application.
The Proposal of Application Notice lodged with Aberdeen City Council today can be seen here.