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Countryfile: Framing environmental protections and regulators as enemies of progress is ‘bat-shed crazy’




The current government are not the first to aspire to getting Britain building by hugely increasing the scale of housebuilding and streamlining planning rules to make it easier to complete major infrastructure projects. — Writes Erin McDaid of Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust

The desire to provide quality, affordable homes and to improve national infrastructure is laudable and no one can dispute that the Government is approaching the challenge with gusto.

However, rather than focussing on the positive measures they need to deliver to make this happen, the Prime Minister and his Deputy have been trotting out tired old lines seeking to frame regulations and planning rules designed to protect nature as the enemy of progress.

Bechstein's bat
Bechstein's bat

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson was never shy of having a pop at ‘Nimbies’ and back in 2020 claimed that ‘newt counting delays’ were a ‘massive drag on the prosperity of this country’ – a claim hotly contested by environmental groups and others.

At the time, The Town & Country Planning Association – a charity which works to challenge, inspire and support people to create healthy, sustainable and resilient places that are fair for everyone, said it was not aware of any evidence that newt surveys were causing unnecessary delays of development and my colleague Craig Bennett, Chief Executive of The Wildlife Trusts, labelled Boris’s speech ‘pure fiction’.

In recent weeks, Angela Rayner – the Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government responsible for delivering the Government’s promised overhaul of the planning system has promised to ‘end the nimby chokehold on house building’ and Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer has vowed to take on the ‘blockers and bureaucrats’ described the planning system as ‘increasingly ruinous’ and called a structure being built as mitigation for impacts of HS2 construction on a colony of rare bats - and referred to disparagingly by others as a ‘bat shed’ - an ‘absurd spectacle’.

In contrast, Housing and Planning Minister Matthew Pennycook, speaking in November as part of the announcement of a new Government scheme to unlock delays to developments which risk increased levels of nitrogen and phosphorous pollution in waterways, damage to natural habitats and harming wildlife said: “We must build more homes across the country and unlock growth, but this must not come at the expense of our natural environment.

John Bridges
John Bridges

“Through this fund and alongside major reforms to the planning system, we will accelerate housebuilding and deliver nature recovery, creating a win-win outcome for both the economy and for nature.” His colleague, Environment Minister Mary Creagh added: “Britain faces a housing and nature crisis.

“This new Government was elected with a mandate to get Britain building again and restore nature. That is why we will deliver a planning system that unlocks the building of homes and improves outcomes for nature.”

They say actions speak louder than words, so hopefully practical measures such as this scheme to provide funding to unlock up to 28,000 homes which posed a risk to the environment will be more indicative of the approach the Government plan to take.

Whilst blaming environmental rules and regulators is a tried, tested and, I would argue, tired trope – the fact that this funding looks set to unlock so much development also points to another brake on development – the desire of housebuilders to make profits.

If all housebuilding is left to the commercial sector, difficult, challenging and potentially less profitable schemes may fail to be delivered.

Research by the Local Government Association, which represents the councils up and down the country that are responsible for the vast majority of planning decisions, has found that over a million homes that were granted planning permission in England over the last decade are yet to be built.

So, rather than seeking to blame environmental protections for delays in building – perhaps the focus should be on putting more pressure on developers to deliver the projects that have already been given planning permission and ensuring that local planning authorities have the resources they need to monitor and take enforcement action where development was agreed subject to steps to mitigate impact on wild species and habitats.



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