The New Approach to Appraisal (NATA) is the Government’s method of appraising the impacts and benefits of transport schemes. In 2007 the Department of Transport (DfT) announced a review of NATA, the NATA Refresh. A key theme in this review was the valuation of the environmental impacts of transport schemes.
Currently, NATA uses the Environmental Capital Approach (ECA), to help value possible impacts on landscape, biodiversity, heritage of historic resources and water environment. The aim of this research was to examine the use of the ECA in NATA and make recommendations as to how the Transport Analysis Guidance web site (WebTAG) might be amended to improve the application and effectiveness of ECA.