This afternoon, Matthew Pennycook spoke in the House of Commons, setting out the Government intention to confirm wide exemptions from biodiversity net gain (BNG) requirements. It is estimated that the exemption announced today will lead to at least 60% of all planning applications escaping BNG obligations. 

Introduced in 2024, BNG is about making sure developers avoid harm to important wildlife habitats, make up for unavoidable losses, and go further and give back to nature, creating new habitats and wild spaces in which people and wildlife can thrive. Done well, it protects wildlife and supports nature recovery. Yet this move, as we have warned since the Government began its consultation on BNG in May, will torpedo business confidence, destroy new growing nature markets, and decimate opportunities for nature recovery in England.  

Other damaging planning proposals are also in today’s package, failing to unlock the win-wins for nature and development this Government promised to deliver.  

Craig Bennett, chief executive of The Wildlife Trusts, says: 

“In their Election Manifesto, Labour made a commitment to ensure that housing and infrastructure development would be done in a way that “promotes nature’s recovery”. But today’s announcement adds to the long list of ways in which this promise is being broken.  

“More specifically, in January of this year when he was Environment Secretary, Steve Reed made a solemn promise that the Government was “committed to Biodiversity Net Gain”. Now, as Housing Secretary, he has broken his word and has weakened it to such an extent that a combined area across England the size of Windsor Forest will now not be restored for nature. It confirms that the majority of planning applications will not now contribute to nature’s recovery. This will see a significant chunk of jobs and private sector investment in nature’s recovery lost.  

“This is happening because from Kier Starmer down, this Government seems to be wedded to an outdated, discredited old-world view that the choice before us is one of nature OR housing, even though there are plenty of examples of how you can have both, and even though it’s abundantly clear the British people want both. We should be working to rebuild our natural infrastructure alongside new housing and built infrastructure, not engage in tired old performative politics that trades one off against each other”.