Those working in the policy arena will be well-aware that when the UK Government uses the phrase “in the spring”, this can often be a misnomer, with the months of March, April and May passing by without sight of the promised document.
However, in this instance, the UK Government has met the timeline committed to in 2024, and yesterday (11 March 2025) published a Planning and Infrastructure Bill.
While we’ll be taking time to review the Bill in much more detail in the days and weeks ahead, here we share our first thoughts.
A new approach to meeting nature laws
The Bill proposes that Natural England leads the creation of environmental delivery plans (EDPs – a new acronym for us all!) to address specific environmental impacts of development at a strategic level – for example nutrient pollution across a river catchment. Developers would then be able to pay a Levy into the Nature Restoration Fund, which would fund pollution reducing projects, to meet legal environmental requirements.
Given that The Wildlife Trusts vociferously campaigned against proposed changes to nature laws a few years ago, there has been some speculation as to why many environmental organisations have not taken up arms against this idea.
There are three key reasons.
Firstly, the idea of establishing a new approach was first mooted by the new Labour Government as part of the King’s Speech, back in July 2024. They committed to engaging with wildlife organisations and only amending legislation where it could be shown it would deliver “positive environmental outcomes”. Since then, there have been discussions and debates – most notably the publication of a development and nature recovery working paper – with the Government inviting views on the idea.
Secondly, the content of proposed legislative changes is a significant improvement on the previous attempt. The Bill incorporates several safeguards – most notably an “overall improvement test” – that seeks to ensure that nature is better off. While the detailed wording should be improved, it is a good starting point for ensuring that the new approach upholds our nature laws.
And finally, Wildlife Trusts are already showing the benefits that a more strategic approach to mitigating nutrient pollution is having, with wildlife benefits secured on top of pollution reductions. Natural England should learn from these positive examples, as it develops new Environmental Delivery Plans.
We need to see safeguards strengthened
That doesn’t mean we are resting on our laurels and won’t be holding the UK Government’s feet to the fire. Our briefing to parliamentarians highlights several ways in which we need to see the safeguards strengthened to ensure the approach is based on scientific evidence and leads to a genuine improvement for wildlife.
At the heart of our comments is the need to uphold the mitigation hierarchy – so that nature is protected first, and that evidence should indicate the likely success of strategic mitigation approaches. Applying these principles will mean that the UK Government’s proposed approach will not work for everything, including bats.
In addition, the upcoming spending review must ensure that Natural England – who is likely to be tasked with developing the delivery plans – have the capacity and skills to build our understanding of the potential of this approach to deliver win-wins for nature and development.
But where next?
If the planning system is to genuinely deliver an uplift in housing delivery and infrastructure development alongside nature’s recovery, this Bill must go further.
The Planning and Infrastructure Bill represents a significant opportunity for the Westminster Government to show it means business for nature. The Wildlife Trusts would like to see the Bill bring forward a new designation – Wildbelt – to protect the space nature needs to recover.
We have just 5 years to meet legal targets to halt the decline in biodiversity. We need to ensure public, private and charity investment in habitat restoration at key sites is protected for the long term.
A Wildbelt designation would do just that and turbo-charge efforts to achieve these environmental targets. It would be informed by new Local Nature Recovery Strategies, which are mapping areas that ‘could become of particularly importance for biodiversity’ and support landowners and managers on Wildbelt sites to access funding from Environmental Land Management Schemes or the new Nature Restoration Fund for example.
Wildbelt is just one of our asks for the Bill. Our briefing outlines other areas that we will be urging the UK Government to progress through the Planning & Infrastructure Bill:
- Strengthen protection for Local Wildlife Sites
- Protect chalk streams from development impacts
- Deliver nature friendly design and energy efficient housing on all development
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