RSDO Environmental Report and Habitats Regulation Assessment

Tender description

The Environment Agency (EA) requires a supplier to impact assess the River Severn Drought Order (RSDO) and produce a full Environmental Report and Habitats Regulations Assessment (HRA) to comply with current drought legislation in England and Wales between January 2025 to March 2027. Lot 1: This project will require the consultant to use the modelled Aquator and 1D model outputs to impact assess the River Severn Drought Order (RSDO) and produce a full Environmental Report and Habitats Regulations Assessment (HRA) to comply with current drought legislation in England and Wales. The in-combination impacts need assessing collaboratively with key stakeholders to share best available information and be more transparent with the aim of reducing potential for conflict come a live application. The Environmental Report and HRA need writing in close consultation with NRW and Natural England's Habitats Directive specialists. <br/><br/>The over-arching objectives of this project are to: <br/><br/>Objective 1 <br/>Consultant to identify the current legislation and guidance applicable to the RSDO and Environmental report and use it to propose a draft structure/contents page for the Environmental report. Consultant needs to consider the cross-border implications between Wales and England and ensure variations in legislation are included and a reference list produced. <br/><br/>Objective 2 <br/>Consultant to identify the current legislation and guidance applicable to the RSDO HRA and use it to outline the HRA process to be followed and propose a draft structure/contents page for each report/stage of investigation. Consultant needs to consider the cross-border implications and ensure variations in legislation are included and a reference list produced. <br/> <br/>Objective 3 <br/>Consultant to deliver a fit for purpose RSDO Environmental Report that satisfies the latest drought guidance. Provided in Word and PDF format with copyright ownership to the EA and Natural Resources Wales (NRW), allowing for future edits and updates to be done internally to keep the document live and enable the insertion of Welsh translations. <br/><br/>Objective 4 <br/>Consultant to deliver a HRA for the RSDO in isolation2 and full in-combination3, working closely with Natural England and NRW to understand concerns and obtain support. Provided in Word and PDF format with copyright ownership to the EA and NRW. <br/> <br/>Objective 5 <br/>Consultant to work with key stakeholders and cross reference with Strategic Resource Options (SROs) ongoing work to conduct a monitoring review and gap analysis of the existing RSDO monitoring programme. <br/><br/>The key skills required to do this project are listed below: <br/><br/>• Understanding of River Severn Regulation. <br/>• Technical understanding of water resource management and drought planning legislation.  <br/>• Experience of undertaking drought permit/order impact assessments and producing Environmental Reports. <br/>• Experience of undertaking Habitats Regulation Assessments. <br/>• Experience of working with multiple stakeholders and regulators on a project with potentially conflicting interests. <br/>• Technical understanding of Aquator modelling and interpreting outputs desirable. <br/>• Project management skills to oversee the development and delivery of the project to time, cost, and quality criteria  <br/>• Clear verbal and written communication for discussions with key project staff and stakeholders. Innovative and varied communication approaches are expected to ensure stakeholders are well engaged during delivery and are readily able to use and embed outputs.  Additional information: The purpose of this PIN is a request for information, offering suppliers the preliminary opportunity to share their potential ideas for the project. In order to understand the markets appetite and ability to resource and bid for this work, we are requesting you respond to this PIN to confirm if you are interested in bidding for this work and that you can meet any or all of the requirements outlined above. Your response should be submitted by email to dgc-laww-buyer@defra.gov.uk by the closing date of 28th October 2024 (15:00). The Authority may contact you to confirm your interest and ability to meet our requirements.<br/>The response to this PIN will determine if/ when we are able to commence a procurement process. This PIN does not commit the Authority to progressing this opportunity beyond this point.<br/>It should also be noted that this PIN invites individuals and organisations to express an interest in this exercise only, and it is NOT a pre-qualification questionnaire, and is NOT part of any pre-qualification or selection process.