We need more homes. But, as one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, we also need more nature. These need not be competing objectives. But, as the Planning and Infrastructure Bill heads into its second reading in the House of Commons, in its excitement to get building, the government risks forgetting this.
The primary aim of this bill is to make it easier to build in Britain. This is a noble aim. But there is a real risk that the houses and towns this government wants to build will not be ones that people want to call home.
Nature can help with this. Greener communities are objectively better than grey ones. They are also far more useful, beyond providing habitat for local wildlife. Tree-lined streets are attractive, but they can also provide shade for those walking down them and protect the road under them from deteriorating under the summer sun and winter rain. Meanwhile, sustainable urban drainage systems absorb excess water, meaning less reliance on storm overflows and reducing the risk of flash flooding.
These are only two examples of how nature-friendly development can not only make homes and communities more liveable, but save the taxpayer money and help the government reach its other environmental objectives on sewage and flooding. And yet, the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, in its current form, does not embrace the co-benefits that nature-friendly development can deliver.
Rather than ensuring all development is nature-friendly development, this government has focused its attention on the creation of a Nature Restoration Fund (NRF).
In theory, there is a lot to like about this fund. Our current approach to protected sites and species is not strategic enough. Developers must pay consultants and lawyers to navigate complex environmental regulations and spend money on mitigating the impact to the natural environment on a site-by-site basis.
This is an inefficient use of money, both for the developers themselves and for those wanting to restore the natural environment. It does not deliver the outcomes we want and need to see if we are going to actually restore nature.
The NRF offers a more strategic approach. Under the NRF, developers will pay into a fund that will then finance improvements at scale, based on a package of approved environmental measures put forward by Natural England (“Environmental Delivery Plans”). Natural England, using this money, will then be tasked with delivering these improvements for nature.
But the need for the NRF at all points to a much bigger problem with how we are trying to protect nature in this country. The current system of protected sites is not delivering the outcomes we need for nature. If it did, why are only 38% of our Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) currently in favourable condition?
At the moment, both our development and nature recovery ambitions are stymied by the unreformed, EU-derived Habitats Regulations. Free from the EU, the UK needs to carve out its own way forward. This means reforming our site designation system.
We need a distinct approach that will not just properly protect but also seek to restore unique UK habitats and species. It makes sense for our new system to be underpinned by the ambitious but achievable targets set by Conservatives within the 2021 Environment Act, rather than EU directives.
This bill does not do this. For all the talk of newts, bats, and spiders, it seems that this government’s bark is bigger than its bite when it comes to reforming the Habitats Regulations for the betterment of nature and development.
While the NRF certainly offers a theoretical improvement to the status quo, there are some clear issues with the practicalities of this approach and its reliance on Natural England, the much maligned arms length body, to deliver it.
In order to deliver these improvements on-the-ground, this bill will grant Natural England the power to compulsory purchase land to restore nature on. Whether or not it will then task other environmental organisations to get their hands dirty planting trees and creating ponds remains to be seen.
One thing is certain though: this top-down approach is likely to kneecap the role that private natural capital markets can play in restoring nature and their ability to channel millions of pounds of private sector money into our rural communities.
This approach has already seen concerns raised by land managers and developers alike that the NRF will compete with Biodiversity Net Gain, a market for nature restoration introduced by the Conservatives, or even make it totally irrelevant.
Indeed, by opting for a statist rather than market-led approach that encourages a variety of providers to generate credits, this money from developers will likely be spent in an inefficient way and see nature not restored at the scale that could be achieved in a marketplace.
Whether as funding distributor or nature recovery deliverer, tasking Natural England, a regulator, with a job that it would usually be regulating no doubt opens this fund up to all manner of perverse incentives. The government will be giving money to a regulator that lacks capacity and has already struggled to deliver big schemes, such as nutrient credits, in the past.
The government must also recognise that its Planning and Infrastructure Bill does not exist in a vacuum. The Habitats Regulations, for example, only apply when a planning decision is being made. Developers are penalised by virtue of needing to engage with the planning system, unlike other actors which do not require planning approval. Activities that add pressure on the natural environment, such as agricultural runoff, continue undeterred, as one of the lucky ones that do not have to interact with our complex planning system.
While the last thing we need is more actors forced to engage with the planning farce, other pressures - that are often adding more pressure to the environment than development - must be reduced. However, recent government action, such as halting the Sustainable Farming Incentive and a likely cut to the nature-friendly farming budget in the spending review, will prevent many farmers from reducing their impact on the natural environment.
Without restoring the trust of farmers and supporting them to reduce their impact, the need to block development on environmental grounds becomes even greater and the underlying issues with our planning system remain. The Planning and Infrastructure Bill must go hand in hand with a commitment from the government to keep the nature-friendly farming budget intact or, better still, to index it in line with inflation.
The UK has been starved of nourishing nature and delicious development for far too long. We can have our cake, and we absolutely must eat it. But, in its current form, the Planning and Infrastructure Bill risks leaving us all hungry.
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