Ric Eales

Richard Eales is the founder and Principal of Collingwood Environmental Planning (CEP) and has over 17 years’ experience of environmental, sustainability and planning consultancy.  Having studied environmental science and land and water management at undergraduate and postgraduate level, he worked for two well established environmental consultancies in the early 1990s before becoming an independent consultant and setting up CEP in 1995.  His particular areas of interest lie in environmental and sustainability assessment and other decision support tools, environmental and spatial planning and the broader consideration of sustainability issues within legislation, policy and practice. 

He has extensive experience of for example: strategic environmental assessment (SEA); sustainability appraisal (SA); environmental impact assessment (EIA); state of the environment reporting; climate change mitigation and adaptation; and river basin management and catchment planning.  Recently, he has prepared various EIA, SEA and sustainability appraisal guidance for UK government and regulatory authorities to comply with relevant legislation and good practice and has developed and delivered several SEA and SA training courses for government officers, statutory consultees, NGOs and utility companies and other responsible authorities.  He was project manager and drafted several sections of the DCLG’s (formally ODPM) guidance on SA incorporating SEA for Regional Spatial Strategies (RSSs) and Local Development Documents (LDDs) and is part of the research team for the Scottish Executive’s SEA Pathfinder project.

He has considerable experience of undertaking environmental and sustainability assessments of a variety of types of policies, plans, programmes and projects and research into environmental assessment tools, techniques and approaches for UK government, regional government and statutory environmental agencies.  Ric has also provided quality assurance roles for several SEAs and SAs and reviewed legal compliance with SEA Directive and relevant guidance, published articles on SEA and SA and delivered guest lectures for undergraduate and postgraduate environmental courses.  Recent and ongoing SEA / SA commissions include managing two SAs incorporating SEA and Health Impact Assessment for the Greater London Authority for their proposed Water Strategy and Climate Change Adaptation Strategy, inputting to the SEAs for the Welsh Assembly on their Rural Development Plan and the Deer Commission for Scotland on their vision and strategy, the Strategic Sustainability Assessment (SSA) of the South West RSS and several SAs of LDDs for Brent Council.

He managed and was the main contributor on a commission for the European Environment Agency (EEA) to produce Environmental Signals 2002, a state of the environment report for Europe and is currently undertaking research for the EEA on the environmental effects of European cohesion policy.  He has also prepared several state of the environment reports for the Environment Agency for England and Wales and has recently been advising them on sustainable construction, flood risk management, land use and spatial planning issues. 

He is currently managing research for Defra on ecosystem services which is focusing on a case study in the Thames Gateway and has undertaken other Defra research on sustainable construction and climate change.  He recently completed an implementation plan for the South East England Regional Assembly (SEERA) on climate change mitigation and adaptation to support the South East Plan and inputted to guidance on water related climate change adaptation for the Environment Agency and SEERA, both as part of ESPACE (an INTERREG funded project).