Planning and Infrastructure Bill and how it may weaken nature conservation protection
Members may be aware that the Government’s draft Planning and Infrastructure Bill has been considered by the House of Commons over the last few months. The Bill is one of the Government’s initiatives to enable more housing to be built in England. Part 3 of the Bill seeks to change how the impact of new housing and commercial developments on nature conservation sites, potentially including the Epping Forest Special Area of Conservation (SAC)/Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), is assessed and mitigated.
Under the existing regulations, developers need to conduct ecological surveys of proposed development sites to establish whether protected species or habitats are present and to consider what measures might mitigate the impact of the development. More broadly, developers, alongside Local Authorities, also need to consider the impact of developments on larger protected conservation sites such as Epping Forest. In the case of the Forest, this is focused on disturbance and damage from increased visitor numbers and damage from air pollution from vehicles.
The draft Bill proposes to change this with the aim of simplifying the system by introducing the “Environmental Delivery Plan” (EDP) regime. This will require the nature conservation regulator, Natural England, to identify, at a strategic level, protected species and habitats on a site, the measures required to mitigate the damage that would be caused by development, and to manage and monitor their implementation. Developers would simply pay a financial contribution into a “Nature Restoration Fund” from which the mitigation measures would be funded. The Government’s view is that this would reduce the bureaucracy and delay in considering planning approvals.
This may sound reasonable, but there is a lack of detailed information on how the system would work in practice and how the safeguards we have now would not be weakened. The Government claims that current environmental protections would not be reduced and that the new system would require an overall improvement in biodiversity on a site, that is, the positive effects will have to outweigh the negative. However, without more information on how the EDPs would be drawn up, what information will be included, and to what level of detail, the Government’s claims cannot be checked. The Trust is very concerned that the new system may weaken the nature conservation protection that it has taken decades to obtain and may undermine the protection of the Forest. The Forest is already facing huge pressures, which will increase as new developments are built, and therefore, existing protections must not be weakened. The majority of conservation organisations in England are also extremely concerned. Amendments to the Bill were requested that sought to ensure that protection is not reduced, but so far, the Government has not accepted them.
The Bill is now being considered by the House of the Lords. The Trust hopes that the Government will provide more detail on how the new system will work and introduce clauses into the Bill to address the concerns raised, and which will provide legally-binding commitments that nature protection will not be weakened.