MPs and Ministers: Stand up for nature

The Planning and Infrastructure Bill is bad news for wildlife

The Wildlife Trusts are very concerned about the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. Part Three of the Bill is set to weaken environmental protections, with Natural England tasked with predicting some environmental impacts of development across an area and developing a plan to address these at a strategic, rather than site-by-site, basis.

In some areas a strategic approach is helping to address the pollution from new developments on important habitats. However, it will not work for all the different ways development can impact the environment, and without strong safeguards nature will lose out. The UK Government’s own environmental watchdog, the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) agrees with this analysis and has produced advice labelling the current proposals as ‘environmentally regressive’. At Commons committee stage of the Bill, the Government rejected amendments designed to provide the safeguards that The Wildlife Trusts, other environmental organisations and the OEP called for.

That’s why we’re now calling for Part Three of the Bill to be scrapped. Please speak up for nature and for your constituents.

Read the OEP's assessment

Nature doesn’t block development

Despite rhetoric from the Chancellor and Prime Minister that preceded the bill, The Wildlife Trusts’ new research shows that bats and great crested newts were a factor in just 3% of planning appeal decisions. The report, Planning & Development: nature isn’t the problem, adds to the growing body of evidence – including the Government’s own impact assessment – showing that nature protections do not block growth, and that the reasons bats and newts are mentioned in appeals are because developers do not provide the right information to inform decisions.

Part Three of the Planning Bill is a harmful solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

Read the report

People value nature – and don’t think UK Government are doing enough

A new poll run by Savanta, commissioned by The Wildlife Trusts, found that less than a third of adult voters believe the Government is taking the nature crisis seriously enough (26%) or listening to local people in planning decisions (24%).

Just a quarter of respondents (25%) said that they would support new building developments in their local area if these new developments harmed the local environment. Less than third (32%) also felt the Government had kept its promise to improve access to nature, promote biodiversity and protect our landscapes and wildlife.

Read the email for MPs from our supporters

Dear [MP],

CC: Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer.

I am deeply concerned that the Planning & Infrastructure Bill, in its current form, represents a betrayal of the Government’s promises to protect and restore nature.

Part 3 of the Bill replaces key environmental protections with a weaker substitute, described by the Government’s own nature watchdog as ‘environmentally regressive’ and which puts irreplaceable habitats and threatened species at risk. The Government say this will resolve development delays, but have been unable to provide the evidence for this.

The false claims that nature is a blocker to economic growth, made repeatedly by the Chancellor, are based on a failure to understand how nature underpins our economy, and boosts people’s health. This contempt for nature is evident in wider Treasury decisions, including threats to cut support for nature-friendly farming and money raised from water company fines to restore polluted rivers instead earmarked for general Treasury funds.

There is still time to change course. I am asking that you call out the Chancellor for her attack on nature - which will harm the natural world, people and the economy itself – and ask the Government to remove Part 3 of the Planning & Infrastructure Bill to prevent environmental regression.

People thrive with nature nearby - and the benefits are felt in our economy and our society. The Government had committed to ‘save Britain’s beautiful countryside and reverse the tide of destruction of the natural environment’, but the current approach led by the Chancellor leaves this promise in tatters and betrays millions of people.

Yours sincerely,