Losing what we love: England’s planning system is destroying nature piece by piece
- Between 2009 and 2020, local authorities in England published an average of 422,000 planning decisions per year, of which about 85% granted planning approval. Of the 98 Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects applications, only four have been refused and one partially refused.
- A snapshot of the data taken in July 2021 shows over 8,000 planning applications located within 500 methres of a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI).
- A new report by the RSPB outlines eight steps that would help governments and local authorities reform the planning system to stop it squeezing nature out and help achieve the government’s own environment plan goals.
England’s planning system is destroying nature and is in dire need of reform according to a new report published by the RSPB. In its current state the system is squeezing nature out and is running counter to the Government’s own goals for nature recovery through the 25-year environment plan.
The new report, Losing What We Love: How planning is affecting our wildlife, highlights the discrepancies in the system and the sheer volume of applications that are swamping an already damaged process. It also lists solutions. Eight steps that could help turn the tide for our beleaguered wildlife.
Between 2009 and 2020, local authorities in England published an average of 422,000 planning decisions per year, of which about were 85% granted planning approval. A snapshot of the data taken in July 2021 shows over 8,000 planning applications located within 500 metres of a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), places that should be protected because of their importance.
Alice Hardiman, RSPB England’s head of policy said, “Our current planning system is broken. Swamped by sheer numbers of applications and with loopholes that pepper the system, allowing developers to weave around conditions meant to protect nature. And what protection for nature there is, has been watered down.
“Applications shouldn’t be viewed in isolation but need to be assessed as part of a wider picture with the cumulative effects of decisions being considered. This is not currently being done and consequently both people and wildlife are losing out. The places, sights and sounds that we love are disappearing.”
But it’s not just the thousands of smaller applications, some of the country’s largest infrastructure projects, or Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs) will take significant tolls on some of our most important places for nature. Of 98 NSIP applications, only four have been refused and one partially refused.
The RSPB’s Minsmere reserve is on a stretch of the Suffolk coast renowned for its abundant wildlife and is one of the most protected places in Europe. However, it is also an area identified by government as a potentially appropriate location to construct a new nuclear power station – EDF’s proposed Sizewell C development. Should that development go ahead the impacts on nature, the environment and Minsmere’s unique sense of place will unarguably be significant and detrimental.
The Swanscombe Peninsula, which sits on the bank of the River Thames, is under threat from the proposed London Resort theme park that, if approved, would see over 100 ha of nature rich land concreted over. The site was confirmed as a SSSI by Natural England only last year (2021).
The new report also sets out some solutions to the current planning quagmire, highlighting eight positive and constructive suggestions as to how our planning system could be improved to better support nature’s recovery.
- Strengthen the protection for nature offered by the Habitats Regulations.
- Introduce a new planning designation to safeguard land for nature’s recovery.
- Reintroduce an effective ‘larger than local’ tier of planning.
- Guarantee that any review of Strategic Environmental Assessment and Environmental Impact Assessment rules results in stronger, not weaker, protection for nature.
- Get the most out of the Biodiversity Net Gain
- Ensure that developer contribution funding continues to be forthcoming for nature
- Give Local Authorities powers to tackle land banking by requiring consented developments
- to be built within a specified time frame.
- Tighten-up legislation to protect species from harmful cumulative impacts of interventions that are currently legal, such as the use of nets and spikes as nesting deterrents.
Alice Hardiman said “England’s planning system urgently needs reform, but we do have the solutions to help fight back against the nature and climate emergencies. The government needs to see the bigger prize, be bold and deliver a system worth of this country.”
Read the report here.
ENDS
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Well done indeed the RSPB. They are really the only major organisation in the U.K. ( Mark Avery excepted) that has the expertise and “clout” to present a report such as this one. They are absolutely right of course.
Sadly however one cannot see this dreadful government at Westminster taking a blind bit of notice of it. When one reads the comment from the Tory MP in West Dorset about the killing of the sea eagle, one of our national nature treasurers, it just confirms the fact that the majority of Tory MPs just hate nature. They hate it because it gets in their way of making money and the greedy, I’m alright Jack, society that they like to foster.
Our overall strategy to protect nature as much as we can, it seems to me, must be to concentrate on protection of nature in Scotland and Wales where there are much more reasonable governments in power and at the same time to counter as much as possible the destruction of our wildlife in England being perpetrated by this Tory Government.
Here here. And the simple solution? Consume less, have fewer children. (And have proportional representation and an independent Electoral Commission, rather than what the government is about to do.)
This is so important. Every government comes in making promises to reverse the losses in biodiversity but it is sadly the case that almost invariably wildlife loses out whenever it clashes with commercial interests. The Swanscombe Peninsular is a particularly egregious example. How can we consider ourselves a civilised country if we are prepared to subsume such wildlife treasures beneath a theme park? If a proposal came in to demolish Salisbury Cathedral and replace it with a shopping mall (or perhaps more likely these days, an Amazon warehouse), people would rightly throw up their hands in horror and reject it outright so how is it possible that a comparable piece of vandalism to our natural heritage is not similarly booted straight into touch?
Swanscombe illustrates one particular issue with our planning system which is the mantra that we should mainly be developing brown field land. Of course, faced with such a morass of applications, planners are keen on simple rules of thumb to help them arrive at decisions quickly but not all brown fields are alike and some, such as Swanscombe are wildlife treasure troves of far greater value than most agricultural land. We need to treat each proposal on its merits and ensure that impacts on wildlife are always properly assessed and taken into account and we should be extremely suspicious of any government proposals aimed at fast-tracking development applications or ‘red-tape cutting’ in this area.
We have been promised that the government is committed to improving the status of wildlife in this country and also that our withdrawal from the EU will not result in any weakening of the protections for wildlife. Such promises all too often turn out to be hollow but we must ensure that the government is held to account and not allowed to forget them quietly and conveniently as it presides over a ‘build- build – build’ trashing of our treasured wildlife sites.
How long have you got on this issue, Mark….
I think the conservation organisations need to pull together and push for developments that require less land – they shouldn’t be afraid of fighting suburban sprawl. I recently watched an excellent video from New York state of a farm sold for housebuilding that was originally planned to have 110 homes on 90% of the site with the rest open space. Rather more progressive people got involved and the 110 homes ended taking up 10% of the site leaving the 90% as open space. From what I saw I’d have been more than happy to live there.
Conversely opening up the greenbelt so that the buyers of executive houses can have them built on very large plots to get a feeling of ‘privacy’ is a recipe for losing a hell of a lot of land from both agriculture and nature conservation. Again as the NFU is so keen in arguing for large scale public subsidy of marginal hill farms to maintain our food security it’s rather surprising they have nothing to say about the loss of better quality farmland to development. Isn’t that strange?
Another thing to remember with housebuilding is it almost never goes backwards: I don’t think I’ve hardly heard of a UK example in the last 50 years were significant areas of land were returned to greenspace from homes. Therefore in practice, housebuilding is permanent. Loss of green land for the foreseeable future.
But lets go on paying people to have children through tax allowances and Child Benefit and every other kind of subsidy. Why not eh?
I would take what these charities say with a large pinch of salt.
Are you all that naïve or stupid enough to believe that bequeathed land hasn’t ended up in developer’s hands? These charities are certainly not Mary Poppins. The conservation industry (yes, it is a corporate industry) is a cash cow at the moment, think of it as a money bait ball, in which a wide and varied group of individuals, corporations, opportunists are making huge (or going to) amounts of money, aided and abetted by the charities and Government. There are many strange bedfellow relationships being agreed. You very well may put some of these organisations on a heroes pedal stall, but if you knew of half what’s going on, your support would diminish.