Egis has appointed Jamie Gleave as senior environmental impact assessment technical director for the UK, bringing more than 25 years’ experience across energy, transport and water infrastructure, including Wylfa Newydd nuclear power station and National Grid electricity transmission schemes. Gleave previously served as EIA technical director at AECOM, where he led its global EIA technical excellence practice and directed environmental work on the A428 Black Cat to Caxton Gibbet and M42 Junction 6 DCO schemes, acting as expert witness. He will work with UK–Ireland head of environment Afshan Rasheed to build Egis’s EIA, DCO and technical assurance capability.

Eighty-three per cent of Britain’s cities – 59 urban areas – are classed as highly vulnerable to urban heat in new spatial analysis by Ordnance Survey, the Met Office and 4 Earth Intelligence. The dataset combines OS building footprints, surface cover and green space with Met Office temperature projections to map local heat exposure at street-block scale. For civil and geotechnical engineers, this points to urgent retrofit of shading, permeable and high-albedo surfaces, and revised pavement and rail design to cope with more frequent extreme surface temperatures.

EDF’s Hinkley Point C nuclear project has applied for permission to appeal a tribunal decision that would bring the 3.2GW plant under Environmental Information Regulations, forcing greater disclosure of environmental data. The ruling, won by campaigners, could require release of detailed monitoring on coastal impacts, cooling water abstraction and construction emissions from major works such as the 900m seawater intake tunnels. Designers, contractors and consultants on similar large infrastructure schemes may face tighter scrutiny over environmental modelling assumptions, baseline data and ongoing performance reporting.