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 chancellor and prime minister would do well to remember that nature does not block growth – it is the very foundation on which growth is built,” said Matt Browne of the Wildlife Trusts.
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”.
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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”.
Hilary McGrady, the director general at the National Trust, which has more than 5 million members, said: “Environmental regulations protect the species we cherish as a nation – whether it’s puffins, butterflies or hedgehogs. We agree that regulations can and should be improved if housing is to be built at the scale suggested.
“But the vital safeguards that regulations provide for nature and people’s quality of life should not be understated, taken for granted or overridden.”
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.”
YouGov polled 2,193 adults over Thursday and Friday last week, with 12% of those polled believing current planning rules go too far in protecting the country’s natural spaces.
