How many Welsh infrastructure projects have been impacted by the Aarhus convention?
The Aarhus Convention affects three areas of public involvement in environmental matters: access to information, public participation in decision making and access to justice.
The access to information requirements of the convention are applied through the Environmental Information Regulations 2004. The regulations are applicable to a wide range of public bodies across Wales which are under a duty to pro-actively publish environmental information. The Welsh Government does not hold a register of all the requests made under the regulations across the public sector. However, in 2024 the Welsh Government received 285 requests under the Environmental Information Regulations out of 1125 total requests for information.
The public participation required by the convention is restricted to the projects listed in its annex, which are all projects requiring environmental impact assessment. Therefore, additional public participation procedures have been built into the environmental impact assessment regulations to implement the convention. We do not hold a complete record of how many infrastructure projects consented by local planning authorities have been subject to environmental impact assessment. Of the 14 developments of national significance determined by the Welsh Ministers during 2024, 11 were accompanied by an environmental statement.
The access to justice provisions of the convention require the public to have access to a review procedure before a court of law, to be able challenge the legality of any decision. The provisions must be fair, equitable, timely and not prohibitively expensive. The Court procedures for judicial review, including provision for cost caps, are a matter reserved to the UK Government.