Wednesday, June 04, 2025
Are Labour abandoning nature?
The paper says that it has examined the threat the bill poses to 5,251 areas known as nature’s “jewels in the crown”, leading to some of the country’s most respected wildlife charities calling for a key part of the bill to be scrapped:
The areas at risk from Labour’s planning changes include cherished landscapes such as the New Forest, the Surrey heaths, the Peak District moors, and the Forest of Bowland.
Rivers such as the Itchen in Hampshire and the Wensum in Norfolk are also threatened by the bill. The thousands of protected habitats are locations for threatened British wildlife such as nightingales, badgers, dormice, otters, butterflies, dragonflies, kingfishers, tufted ducks and egrets.
The bill is the product of the government’s promise to build 1.5m homes to help address the UK’s housing affordability crisis, and approve 150 major infrastructure projects, in this parliament. The pledge is key to Labour’s plan to boost economic growth; however, a recent study suggests the government is likely to miss its new homes target. The government says the bill does not weaken environmental protections.
But according to three separate legal opinions on the planning and infrastructure bill currently going through parliament, legal protections will be rolled back by the legislation, making it easier for developers to build on areas that have historically been protected under UK and international law.
The Guardian has identified 10 protected sites that are under particular threat from development under the new legislation amid growing criticism of Labour’s bill.
They include one of the last strongholds for nightingales in England at Lodge Hill in Kent; a wetland dating back 2,600 years in south Devon; an internationally important tidal wetland at Tipner west in Portsmouth; and woods dating back as far as the 17th century at Sittingbourne, Kent, part of the 2.5% of the UK’s ancient woodland that still remains.
These areas represent just a handful of the most protected environmental gems across England which include 4,100 sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs), all currently protected by the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981; 71 wetlands protected under the internationally-binding Ramsar convention; 256 special areas of conservation (SACs) and 824 special protection areas, (SPAs) all protected under UK and international law in the habitats directive.
Though numerous, these protected areas in total only cover just under 8% of land in England. Critics of the bill say ensuring they continue to be protected does not amount to a block on building new houses.
In a legal opinion, Alex Goodman KC said the consequences of the planning and infrastructure bill as drafted were that any adverse impacts a development inflicted on the most protected natural areas in England, including SSSIs, SACs and Ramsar sites, must be “disregarded”.
“[The bill] thereby withdraws the principal legal safeguard for protected sites,” he said. “This amounts to a very significant change.”
Goodman has provided one of three separate legal opinions on the bill since it was presented by Angela Rayner, secretary of state for housing, communities and local government.
All, including that of the government’s own watchdog, the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP), challenge Rayner’s assertion to parliament that the bill is not a rollback of environmental law. Rayner has been threatened with a judicial review brought by nature groups if she does not “correct” her comments.
We need new homes, but not at any cost, and in this case the cost of developing these sites is too high. The government can meet its targets without them.
