Cross-government planning proposals threaten nature and must be fixed – Inside track

This post is by Richard Benwell, chief executive of Wildlife and Countryside Link

The planning system must be improved for nature.

When development damages protected wildlife, developers shouldn’t scrape by with an offset as they do today. They should pay toward restoration. In an ecological emergency, as we are, every industry responsible for nature’s decline must help fill the multi-billion-pound nature finance gap.

When funds are raised, they should be used more strategically. There are excellent mitigation providers, but it makes sense to pool funds to deliver bigger, better, more joined up nature recovery and bring landscapes alive.

Those are the nature “wins” promised by the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. You can see their silhouette in the legislation. There’s a requirement for new Environmental Delivery Plans to achieve “material improvement”. The new Nature Recovery Fund is meant to be the catalyst for greater benefits for every pound.

When the bill was introduced, those wins were completely overshadowed by looming legal risks. What hope could there be of benefits when legal certainty, avoidance of harm and following strict scientific proof were going to be swapped for ministerial subjectivity?

Despite amendments, huge implementation risks remain
Since then, the government has made some of Wildlife and Countryside Link’s proposed amendments, which the Office for Environmental Protection say “substantially allay [its] concerns“. However, with changes of the magnitude presented in the bill, huge risks remain. As the bill enters crunch stage in parliament, there are implementation gaps in scientific and legal safeguards that must be filled and political agendas underway that could easily undermine the whole thing.

Those risks must be addressed. But we must not forget the outlines of improvements signalled in the bill—more restoration and better, more ambitious projects—or the wider need to ensure people who live in every development can benefit from the joy and resilience of nature. Let’s not settle for taking the sharp edges of a risky bill; we should expect more from a government that says it’s committed to nature recovery.

Nature bashing has to stop
From the outset, the promise of “win-wins” has been drowned out by bat-bashing with a MAGAphone. With factual inaccuracy, red caps, and brazen slogans, efforts in some parts of the government have been undermined by Treasury attempts to portray wildlife laws as a blocker.

The species targeted aren’t the easiest to love—bats, newts, snails, spiders, pigeons—though plenty of us do. Yet the same laws also protect red squirrels, otters, salmon, butterflies and bluebells. It seems no coincidence that it is the snails that are being used as scapegoats.

Behind the slogans are other threats. Proposals to hack back requirements for builders to ensure biodiversity net gain in developments, which would let off 80 per cent of applications. Changes to judicial review and rumoured plans to withdraw from the Aarhus Convention could make access to environmental justice unaffordable. Suggestions that protections for National Parks might be weakened have thankfully been seen off, but for how long?

Even where the story could have been one of successful application of the law for green growth—recent agreement of a water neutrality plan to enable housing in Horsham—the news was growth-washed into conflict by the government’s disdain for species.

We can’t say it strongly enough: for planning reform to succeed for both people and nature, this newt-bashing, snail-baiting, spider-hating scapegoating must stop.

As the Planning Bill proceeds, there are three areas where much greater clarity will be needed.

1. Don’t risk harming irreplaceable habitats
The government has promised that irreplaceable habitats (such as ancient woodlands, chalk streams and peatlands) can’t be included in an Environmental Delivery Plan. Ministers argue that the bill prevents it because it will not be possible to demonstrate overall improvement. But this can’t be left to chance. Remember that there have been attempts to replace the irreplaceable, like HS2’s futile efforts to translocate ancient woodland. A list of irreplaceable habitats that must be excluded would give certainty to developers, communities and environmentalists.

2. Avoid flexibility where threats are greatest
The mitigation hierarchy must not be abandoned. In some cases, like nutrient neutrality, it’s reasonable to give some flexibility if risks are negligible. But the bill treats all protected wildlife the same, papering over the differences between marginal off-site effects and direct harm to threatened wildlife. The government must spell out how it will ensure the Environmental Delivery Plan approach prioritises avoidance of harm and when conservation measures must be delivered before damage is done.

3. Base decisions on solid evidence
Improvement must not be based on guesswork. Environmental Delivery Plans are likely to involve modelling to assess harm. With good information, that can work well. However, in many cases environmental information is so scarce that accurate baselines will be impossible and for some wildlife, there will simply be no alternative to proper site surveys.

Nature and development must be in balance
One perennial question is how to achieve balance between sustainable development and nature.

Of course there must be a balance. But, at the moment, it’s utterly out of kilter. Aiming for a balance in the narrow provisions of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill overlooks the fact that the see-saw is weighted heavily in favour of short-term economic growth and leaves nature high and dry.

To achieve balance, systemic reform is needed to put allocation of land for wildlife recovery on a par with development and to make meeting climate and nature targets a core purpose of planning. It must include trees, wetlands and greenspaces in every development, and basic measures like swift bricks as standard.

The government and parliamentarians still have time to achieve nature-positive planning. To succeed, every department must stop the bat-bashing and back a bold Environmental Improvement Plan, which the government has promised to publish later this year. The gaps in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill need to be fixed. Maybe then the improvements that the government has promised – and truly sustainable development – might come into view.