23Aug 2016
CEP commissioned to evaluate TimberLINK

Photo credit: ‘Kintyre’ by John Lord on Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

CEP is Undertaking the Environmental and Economic evaluation of TimberLINK for Forestry CommissioN SCOTLAND

CEP, in association with Reference Economic Consultants and the University of Strathclyde, has been commissioned to undertake an environmental and economic evaluation of TimberLINK for Forestry Commission Scotland.  

TimberLINK is an environmental transport initiative which commenced in 2000 and is designed to provide a sustainable alternative to road haulage. The service, supported by the Scottish Government, ships around 80-100,000 tonnes of timber a year from forests in Argyll to processors in Ayrshire across the Firth of Clyde. As well as helping to ensure economic development around the local ports, the service has been estimated to remove around 8,000 lorry journeys a year from roads between Argyll and Ayrshire.

CEP is carrying out the evaluation of TimberLINK to inform the decision on the future of the service beyond the end of the current funding period in March 2017.

CEP’s Dr Peter Phillips is managing the project under the direction of Dr Bill Sheate.

Team CEP
16Aug 2016
CEP undertaking a meta-evaluation of its past policy evaluations

 

Photo credit: ‘puzzle’ by Kevin Dooley on Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

CEP undertaking a ‘meta-evaluation’ of its past policy evaluations for CECAN

As part of CEP’s role as a partner in CECAN (Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus), CEP is carrying out a meta-evaluation of a sample of the evaluation projects it has undertaken over the last 10 years. The review will seek to learn the lessons from past policy evaluations, and the value of different types of approaches and methods used for evaluating complexity.

This extensive meta-evaluation of projects will support CECAN’s initial scoping stage and provide critical insights in understanding complexity and developing new ways to measure the effectiveness of policies across the ‘nexus’.

CEP’s Dr Clare Twigger-Ross and Dr Bill Sheate are joint project leads.

Team CEP
12Aug 2016
EU publishes SEA Directive Effectiveness study

CEP a contributing author TO European Commission Study on the effectiveness of the SEA Directive (Directive 2001/42/EC)

An important review study of the SEA Directive, to which CEP contributed, was published recently by the European Union.  The objective of the Study concerning the preparation of the report on the application and effectiveness of the SEA Directive (Directive 2001/42/EC) was to provide the Commission with information on Member States’ progress and challenges experienced in the application of the Council Directive 2001/42/EC (‘SEA Directive’) on the assessment of the effects of certain plans and programmes on the environment for the period 2007-2014.

The study analysed the practical implementation of the SEA Directive across all 28 Member States and then evaluated the performance of the legislation to understand how environmental considerations have been integrated into planning processes and the extent to which the SEA Directive contributes to achieving better and more coherent planning.  The study found that the SEA Directive has brought about some significant benefits to strategic planning, while also making recommendations that could further improve its efficiency, effectiveness and coherence into the future.

Dr Bill Sheate and Ric Eales from CEP contributed to the study as expert advisors, in association with Milieu Ltd, Brussels.

Team CEP
3Aug 2016
CEP delivered seminar at James Hutton Institute

Photo credit: ‘land lines’ by apalca on Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

CEP’s Dr Peter Phillips delivered a seminar on land use policy evaluation at JHI

On 28th July, CEP’s Dr Peter Phillips gave an invited seminar to members of the James Hutton Institute Social, Economic and Geographical Sciences (SEGS) Research Group. His seminar was entitled Evaluating policies for sustainable land use – methods and case studies and built on CEP’s land use and natural environment policy evaluation and research expertise and experience in Scotland and elsewhere. 

Team CEP