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Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill is rare chance to create planning system that works, says Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust




Ahead of the second reading of the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill in Parliament this week, wildlife trusts across the country, including Nottinghamshire, have written to local MPs urging them to ensure that we don’t miss a once in a generation opportunity to create a planning system that works for everyone — wherever they happen to live, writes Erin McDaid, of Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust.

Planning legislation is rarely overhauled, and this important Bill provides the opportunity to put nature and people at the heart of our planning system ­— giving us a system that helps restore nature, tackle the climate crisis, and support people’s health and well-being.

I recently highlighted issue with the planning system being stacked in favour of developers, but this Bill presents us an opportunity to call for a system that helps shape healthier and happier places for us all to live in and reverses decades of wildlife decline to finally put nature into recovery.

Countryfile (57193395)
Countryfile (57193395)

The Bill does include some positive measures to prioritise the environment within the planning process, but it doesn’t adequately recognise that we are facing both a climate and nature crises — or recognise the urgency with which we need to act.

The levelling up agenda is most often framed in terms of balancing opportunity and investment across the UK, with a focus on rectifying disparities between regions, but when it comes to the protection of nature and people’s ability to access it, clear inequalities exist in our towns, cities and regions and the Bill must seek to address these too.

Countryfile (57193392)
Countryfile (57193392)

Everyone should have the right to benefit from high-quality wild spaces close to where they live.

Last year, the Environment Act included a commitment to developing Local Nature Recovery Strategies that ensure local authorities have a duty to put nature into recovery.

As well as bringing nature back, by focusing on local issues and actions, these strategies have the potential to level up people’s access to nature.

Countryfile (57193401)
Countryfile (57193401)

Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust is already working with planning authorities across the county to get the best possible outcomes for both people and nature from these strategies, but the new Bill fails to consider how they might be delivered.

Without joined up legislation, new planning rules could undermine or even scupper their chances before they are strategies are written. This would be a massive wasted opportunity.

To put nature into recovery we need to create significant areas of new habitat, space where nature can thrive. To help nature recover these areas need protection but they fail to qualify for existing protections which are based on an assessment of current value for wildlife.

Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust. (2682719)
Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust. (2682719)

We are calling for a new designation to protect them, and we’re calling it Wildbelt.

We welcome the fact that a new nature recovery designation was suggested in the government’s recent Nature Recovery Green Paper, but it needs to be reflected in planning legislation and must be enabled by the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill.

Protecting these areas from damaging development in the future is an essential requirement for achieving the government’s pledge to protect 30% of land for nature by 2030.

Countryfile (57193398)
Countryfile (57193398)

We are calling for the Bill to include a clause requiring the Secretary of State to maintain a Nature Recovery Network, which includes at least 30% of land in England by 2030.

This can be done by strengthening protections for existing sites, like the SSSI network, and by extending protections to new sites created for nature to recover.

Without a Nature Recovery Network, the 30 by 30 target will not be achieved. Local Nature Recovery Strategies, introduced through the Environment Act, will play a crucial role in mapping and shaping the network — but these new strategies must not end up gathering dusts on shelves.

They need to be a central component of the local plans that guide where development can and can’t take place.

With the right changes to the Bill now we could shift from having a planning system that is failing nature to one designed to help bring wildlife back and ensure we all have opportunities to connect with nature on our doorsteps.



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