22 December 2025
A new ISEP advice note aims to fill an important gap in environmental planning: the absence of a clear, established methodology for assessing how development affects soil health. Although soil health is increasingly referenced in EIA scoping documents by Natural England and major consultancies, practitioners currently lack consistent tools for evaluating the impacts of development on soil biological and chemical properties. To address this issue, a team of experienced soil specialists have produced Soil Health in Environmental Assessments and Reports.
This new advice note arrives at a time when the UK government is proposing to replace Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) with Environmental Outcomes Reports (EORs) in England. These would shift assessments to a more strategic, outcomes-based approach. However, as the transition to EORs is expected to take time and perhaps not at all in Scotland and other parts of the UK, the advice note has been designed to work alongside existing SEA, EIA and forthcoming EOR requirements, offering a flexible framework that can evolve as understanding of soil health advances.
The advice note complements the 2022 ISEP guidance, A New Perspective on Land and Soil in Environmental Impact Assessment, which evaluates soil functions through their physical properties. These include food production, biodiversity, and roles in the hydrological and carbon cycles. Soils with the highest sensitivity such as peatlands, best and most versatile agricultural land, and ancient woodland soils, are those that deliver disproportionately important environmental functions.
Measuring soil health presents practical challenges due to natural variability, seasonal changes, and the influence of land management on biological and chemical properties. For this reason, the advice note proposes a methodology in which practitioners first assess effects on soil functions using physical indicators, then supplement this with targeted biological and chemical health indicators suited to the soil types present. The emphasis is on a realistic, implementable approach that supports meaningful assessment during the current transitional period and enhances the integration of soil health into environmental reporting.
Soil Health in Environmental Assessments and Reports
