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Severance (2022-) War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, tr. Louise and Aylmer Maude

UK charities urge ministers to stop scapegoating nature for planning failures

Exclusive: RSPB and National Trust among groups saying rhetoric from Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer at odds with public sentiment

the Guardian

Nature charities with a combined membership of about 8 million people are pressing the prime minister and chancellor to stop demonising wildlife and to urgently strengthen environmental protections in new planning laws.

Organisations which are household names, such as the RSPB, the National Trust and the Wildlife Trusts, are calling on MPs to back amendments to the planning and infrastructure bill to end what they say is the scapegoating of nature for the failures of the planning system. They say the anti-nature rhetoric employed by Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer, who has labelled environmental objectors as “blockers”, is at odds with public sentiment.

A YouGov poll commissioned by the groups revealed 71% of the public would support increased planning protections for green and blue spaces, including fields, woodland, community parks, national parks, rivers, lakes and streams.

The organisations are urging MPs to back amendments to toughen environmental protections in the bill as it goes through its second reading on Monday, including adding strict rules that environmental benefits must significantly outweigh harm from development and a legal duty to avoid harm to protected wildlife wherever possible.

The bill would mean housebuilders and developers can disregard environmental regulations for individual projects and instead pay into a national nature restoration levy. Some critics have labelled this a reversal from the polluter pays principle to a system of paying to pollute.

Leaders of the nature organisations have worked closely with ministers in an attempt to ensure rivers, chalk streams – which are unique freshwater habitats found mostly in the south and east of England – and threatened species such as dormice, otters and badgers, have their protections maintained in the new planning bill. However, they say trust has been broken between ministers and the charities.

Richard Benwell, the chief executive of Wildlife and Countryside Link, an umbrella group for more than 80 charities, said the planning changes could shake the very foundations of environmental law in England. “After months of senior ministers scapegoating nature, trust is eggshell thin. To rebuild trust and grasp the opportunities, the days of demonising wildlife must end,” he said.

“Government should work quickly to amend the bill, to shore up safeguards for the UK’s most precious wildlife, and to ensure that the planning system is nature-positive, with every development wilder by design.”

The charities say any new law should respect the key environmental rules that harm should be avoided wherever possible and always avoided where the damage would be irreparable. They added that the legal tests in the bill that nature benefits must “outweigh” harm from a development are too weak.

The government says the new planning rules will unleash a “building boom” as it pursues its target of 1.5m new homes by the end of this parliament. It says it will “replac[e] the current systems of environmental assessment to deliver a more effective and streamlined system that reduces costs and delays for developers, whilst still protecting the environment”.

Reeves has repeatedly pitted nature against growth, saying the government will cut red tape to “focus on getting things built, and stop worrying about the bats and the newts”.

Beccy Speight, RSPB’s chief executive, said: “We are in the middle of a nature and climate crisis. The public and our natural world deserve better and our future resilience depends on it. If unamended, the bill risks doing nothing but accelerating the catastrophic decline of our natural world to the detriment of everyone.”