Seal Sands Link Road Culvert Number 1 Seal Sands Link Road Billingham TS2 1TP Data via plota.co.uk

Natural England advice: extra wastewater in these catchments harms protected habitats, so schemes must offset their nutrient load, usually through credits.

The Environment Agency flood map for planning. Councils use it to decide when a flood risk assessment and the sequential test are needed. It is indicative and does not show whether a particular property will flood.

Where development of farmland is needed, policy prefers poorer land over the best and most versatile (grades 1, 2 and 3a). Three sources: Natural England's post-1988 field surveys, which are definitive where they exist; the Defra predictive map for England (2025) and the Welsh Government predictive map, modelled from the soil map with 3a and 3b split; and the 1970s provisional map, which planners and other services still show, coarser and with grade 3 undivided. Where the provisional and predicted grades disagree, treat the predicted grade as the current estimate and expect an application to carry its own survey.

Harm to a protected site is only accepted where there is no alternative and an overriding public interest.

Nationally significant infrastructure projects (power stations, electricity lines, pipelines, major roads and railways, harbours, airports and reservoirs) are consented by a Secretary of State under the Planning Act 2008, after an examination by the Planning Inspectorate, rather than by the council. The boundary is the one the Inspectorate consults on and can change as the scheme does. Projects are shown within 2 km of the site.