Environmental Impact Assessments: Valuing Grassland
Community gardens value their local natural environments and are keen to look after native
ecosystems. However, some may overlook the habitat value of grassland.
While grassland may not always look appealing or exciting, some areas contain very active
and precious ecosystems which should not be disturbed. For example, they may contain
wildflowers that are becoming rarer and support a wide range of insects, mammals and
birds of prey that feed on them.
There are regulations that protect some grasslands, especially those which have not been
subject to recent cultivation. So, if you are planning to disturb a grassed area, for example a
piece of marginal land, find out more below about the regulations protecting grassland.
Environmental Impact Assessment
An Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is a legal requirement to gauge how detrimental
a project will be to the existing environment and would be carried out by a qualified
professional.
Community growing groups would need to consider if one or more of the points below
apply:
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Does your project involve cultivating more than 4.9 acres (2 hectares)?
Is it semi-natural or unimproved grass land?
Has it remained uncultivated for 15 years or more?
Will you be restructuring rural land (moving soil and rock)?
Not all uncultivated sites are of a particularly high environmental value. Land with a high
environmental value has wide variety of native species of plants growing that have not been
planted by humans.
If there are species growing that are indicative of cultivation, then it probably won’t need an
Environmental Impact Assessment.
If you have cultivated a piece of grassland and this is questioned in the future, it is useful to
have some notes recording how you decided it was not necessary to have an Environmental
Impact Assessment before cultivating.
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If you are dealing with grassland, examine
a square metre of the land and look for
ryegrass (see image). Ryegrass is
commonly sown by farmers when seeding
fields for their stock to graze and its
presence is a good indicator that the land
has been cultivated in the past
Over time it is replaced by other species. If
more than 30% of the sward is ryegrass,
this shows that the land has been
cultivated recently is not of high environmental value.
If, instead of ryegrass, you identify a wide number of different plants and grasses, then it is
probably quite high value environmental land. In this case you can either consider an
alternative site or get an EIA carried out.
EIA England
Natural England is the body in charge of EIAs in England, which are covered by two pieces of
legislation:
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Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) Regulations 2011
Environmental Impact Assessment (Agriculture) (England) (No 2) Regulations 2006
You can get more information at: www.gov.uk/environmental-impact-assessments or via
the Natural England EIA helpline: 0800 028 2140.
EIA Wales
The Welsh Government is responsible for EIAs, which is covered by the following
regulations: Environmental Impact Assessment (Agriculture) (Wales) Regulations 2007.
The Welsh Government has a webpage for further information:
wales.gov.uk/topics/environmentcountryside/consmanagement/conservationbiodiversity/e
iahome/?lang=en
Horticulture Wales have produced a factsheet on EIA in Wales which may be useful:
www.horticulturewales.co.uk/UserFiles/library/information%20sheets/EIA%20factsheet%20
-%20English.pdf
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