The Planning and Infrastructure Bill as introduced to Parliament does what the name suggests – it reforms the planning system in order to facilitate infrastructure.

One of the biggest reforms is to erode environmental protections for what are currently, but won’t be for long, our most protected species and habitats.

Sir Keir Starmer has repeatedly made it clear in numerous speeches that he sees newts and bats as the biggest blockers to development. Well not only does this bill weaken protections for newts and bats, but it also weakens protections for beavers, dormice, otters, porpoises and other precious species.

There is no doubt that planning reforms and a strategic approach to mitigation delivery could speed up planning and help restore nature, but these reforms don’t.

In summary these reforms:

• allow developers to pay into a central fund instead of carrying out surveys to see what species their developments will harm
• undermine the mitigation hierarchy as developers can simply pay into the fund instead of first trying to avoid harming species
• allow for environmental mitigation to be carried out far away from where the harm is caused, so local communities may suffer the impact of development but not see any of the benefits of any mitigation provided
• undermine the polluter pays principle as developers may not be required to pay all the costs of conservation measures required to compensate for the damage done
• disincentivise developers who want to do the right thing and create habitats on site from doing so
• weaken our environmental protections by lowering the standard required to be shown that conservation measures delivered by Natural England will compensate for harm done to species and habitats.
• breach the precautionary principle, that where measures risk harm they will not be taken, as the lack of pilot schemes or evidence of effectiveness of the proposed reforms risks unintended consequences and harm to nature

Angela Rayner states that the reforms do not reduce the level of environmental protections. This is questionable and whilst that point is explored the reforms relating to the environment should be paused or, at the very least, not be applied to protected species.

This is also a missed opportunity to provide new protections for chalk streams, one of our rarest yet unprotected habitats, which are suffering greatly from pollution and over abstraction.

The Government needs to focus on ensuring growth applies to our species and habitats, as well as our economy.

Further information can be found here:

• CIEEM responds to Planning and Infrastructure Bill
• The Wildlife Trusts' blog: Legislation that must go further for nature