Part 3 of The Planning & Infrastructure Act 2025 is no longer a paper tiger. With the publication of the draft Norfolk Environment Delivery Plan (EDP) and associated consultation in September, the Act’s contentious approach to environmental protection is no longer theoretical – it will shortly be tried, and tested, on the ground.
A pilot in polluted waters
The catchments of three Norfolk Rivers have the dubious distinction of serving as guinea pig. The three are some of the gems of East Anglian nature; the River Wensum, Norfolk’s longest chalk stream, and the Rivers Yare and Bure, the two blue arteries that nourish the fens and lakes of the Norfolk Broads. All three are protected by the Habitats Regulations and all three are polluted. Plans for over 15,000 new homes in the area over the next ten years are set to increase this pollution, in particular phosphorus pollution from human sewage from the new homes.
Phosphorous pollution has a pleasantly alchemical ring to it – the reality is far grimmer than the phrase suggests. It overloads water with nutrients, sparking disproportionate algae growth, which reduces the light and oxygen in rivers. It amounts to a toxic green smog for freshwater species, darkening and choking the life out of rivers. As Norfolk’s rivers struggle against this, the 15,000 new homes promise to make things worse, increasing phosphorus pollution in the Wensum by 0.4%, the Yare by 0.7% and the Bure by 2.4%. These increases may seem small, but they could be sufficient to tip a struggling river over into a dead one, especially when combined with phosphorus pollution from agriculture and with nitrogen pollution, a small proportion of which comes from new homes, but that is mostly is the result of agricultural practices.
It is here that the Norfolk EDP, written by Natural England, steps in to try to help. To help gain planning permission, developers are to be invited to pay a Nature Restoration Levy, to fund EDP nature conservation measures to be set against the pollution caused by the new homes. The proposed EDP conservation measures broadly comprise:
- Fen and wetland habitat restoration
- Changes to agricultural land use
- Strict drainage standards for development built off mains sewage
- River restoration
- Deer management
The EDP appears to estimate that in the Bure catchment, measures i) and ii) will offset around 66% of phosphorous pollution from the new homes. Precise figures are not given for the Rivers Yare and Wensum, but the incomplete figures provided suggests a 30-40% reduction estimate. It is notable that throughout the document, the numbers given are partial and sometimes confused. In addition to opaque scoring systems, this hinders analysis and engagement. Measures iii to v are estimated to have minor impacts only on phosphorus reduction, with the bulk of the benefit they provide being through wider nature recovery. The combination of this reduction in phosphorus pollution (perhaps offsetting around half of that from new homes overall) and nature-boosting measures unrelated to pollution add up, according to the EDP, to an overall improvement for protected features from the new homes and associated EDP measures.
A flawed approach
If this feels like a fudge, that’s because it is – as required by the Planning and Infrastructure Act. The core of the Act’s approach to environmental protection is substitution; substitution of strict Habitat Regulation requirements to cause no harm to a protected feature for a weaker, generalised EDP requirement to show ‘overall improvement’. The word overall opens the door to harm being allegedly cancelled out by wider benefits. The Wildlife Trusts and others fought hard against this inferior substitution during the passage of the Act, but in the end the Government’s majority forced the change through. The Habitats Regulations can now be substituted out, and with them strict adherence to the vital mitigation hierarchy which requires developers to prioritise avoiding harm to nature. Even the loose adherence to the mitigation hierarchy promised by the Government in subsequent regulations appears to have been abandoned in practice, along with the core environmental principle of prioritising rectification of harm at source.
In a country with very little nature left, we shouldn’t take the risk of allowing specific and significant harm to protected sites, in the hope that generalised benefits are enough to cancel them out. Yet Keir Starmer’s Government were determined to roll the dice. We are now dealing with the consequences of Starmer’s Planning and Infrastructure Act, even as the new Burnham administration adopts a more positive approach to nature. Notably the EDP process is inherently top-down, imposing plans and a nationally set process on local areas. This is likely to include areas who have developed successful and ecologically effective local nutrient mitigation schemes, like in the Solent. This centralisation is a long way away from No10’s promises of hope-centred devolution.
This first Starmer-legacy EDP is just as we and others warned - a promise that falls short, with specific, significant harms seeming likely to outweigh general, speculative benefits. Under the plan phosphorus pollution from new homes is still going to increase existing pollution levels, perhaps by 0.2% on the Wensum, 0.4% on the Yare and by 1.2% on the Bure, a scale that could still be enough to tip the rivers over the edge, particularly on the Bure. Wider nature recovery measures like improved deer management, as welcome as they are, will do nothing to prevent this threat to rivers.
How can a landscape like the Broads be healthy, if the rivers that nurture it are dead?
The Planning and Infrastructure Act’s EDPs are a flawed approach, not fit for purpose in a nature crisis. Our main ask of the Burnham Government is to drop this flawed legacy of the Starmer Government. Just because you can do something under an Act doesn’t mean that you should.
Routes to improvement
However, if the Government remains committed to pursuing this course, there are ways in which they can improve the draft Norfolk EDP to reduce the risks to nature. The EDP should be much more focussed on reducing pollution and prioritise measures to slash the amount of phosphorous from new homes reaching the three rivers in the first place.
Such measures include upgrades to inefficient private sewerage for homes that are not on the mains drainage; these are a potent source of phosphate pollution and improving them is eminently deliverable. The EDP suggests new standards for new off-mains drainage homes but makes no mention of retrospective improvements for existing off-mains drainage homes. Action could also be taken to improve sewage treatment works that serve whole swathes of the population. Even when upgraded to the highest technically achievable standards their effluent is not phosphate-free. Interceptor wetlands could be created below sewage treatment works, to ‘polish’ the effluent further, when the water industry has already done as much as it can do. Sustainable Urban Drainage systems (SuDS) also have a role to play, as they capture and store urban pollution picked up by rainwater, before it washes into rivers. The EDP notes existing planning rules to apply SuDS to new developments in the catchments but fails to consider retrospectively fitting them to existing developments and to locations where road-run off concentrates. SuDS applied at scale across the catchments could be transformational. All of these pollution-reduction options are not considered fully in the draft EDP, for reasons unknown.
The Wildlife Trusts will be responding to the EDP consultation to make the case for this greater focus on pollution reduction, and to evidence how it could be achieved. We will also ask Natural England to commit to a diverse delivery model for this and other EDPs, with a range of partners being used to deliver the EPD measures. Many private sector ecological consultancies are worried that the EDP model could diminish the work and viability of the ecological sector. This would be a loss, not just for the businesses involved, but also for nature recovery – ecological consultancies are a repository of huge knowledge and expertise on how to bring nature back, which the country cannot afford to lose. All of the organisations that have a track record of successful contribution to nature recovery should be allowed to play their part. The Wildlife Trusts will continue to contribute our own expertise in habitat restoration, essential to tackling river pollution whether or not an EDP model is used.
There are some things to welcome in the draft EDP. The language used in the documents, and in the communications from Defra around the consultation launch, show a marked improvement from the reductive ‘builders versus blockers’ language used by the Starmer administration. There is an attempt made to genuinely consider nature’s needs. Natural England and Defra have also clearly worked hard to sequence measures in the most effective way for nature, with upfront funding prioritised and meaningful arrangements for long term monitoring and maintenance put in place. This is a direct result of amendments to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill secured by environmental champions in the Commons and Lords last year. Safeguards added by Parliamentarians have made the EDP process better. If they act on consultation responses and refocus the EDP on preventing pollution, Natural England have the chance to make the EDP as effective as possible. A doubtful sticking plaster for pollution from new development could, with a lot of changes, become a workable bandage.
The bigger picture
Ultimately however we are past the need for bandages. The Yare, Bure and Wensum, like other rivers in England, are suffering from a host of other threats, including significant nutrient pollution from agriculture and fundamental changes to river ecosystems from climate change. We need river restoration at scale, aiming to actively recover river health across the board, not just to mitigate one threat to it. The steady decline of our rivers should not be something we quietly accept.
As well as responding to the EDP consultation, The Wildlife Trusts are launching a new ‘Fix Water’ campaign, calling for radical change to save our struggling rivers. It is time to tell politicians to give nature’s needs the time and attention they gave to developers through the Planning & Infrastructure Act. River health is too important to be treated as a sidenote in a story concentrated on development. We need ambitious policies to move us to a new, better model of water stewardship, tackling all the threats to freshwater health and focussed on restoring rivers for nature and people.
We have had years of policy like EDPs, development-focussed initiatives that risk huge harm to nature and where the best possible outcome is those harms being mitigated. With nature’s decline continuing, and the clock ticking to complete collapse, policy aiming for score-draws simply won’t cut it anymore. Enough of the sticking plasters.
Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s initial response to the EDP can be found here.