RSK Wilding’s initial response to the recent government Planning Reform Working Paper
At the end of 2024, DEFRA produced a Planning Reform Working Paper on Development and Nature Recovery, with a call for responses and views on the contents of the Paper. The government, broadly speaking, is looking to switch up the way nature and wildlife are considered during development, and furthermore, how development may fund nature recovery.
As the paper suggests, these things need not face off as the antithesis of each other. There will, quite rightly, be concerns around due process and environmental safeguards under this proposed new regime, which seeks to enable strategic outcomes for nature recovery at the same time as improving efficiency of development for economic growth. We’ve seen the ambitious proposals put forward by the Labour government, to build 1.5 million new homes in the next five years – which would essentially mean building 300,000 homes a year – at least 50,000 more than the average number built annually in recent years. This working paper looks at how will be achieved whilst attempting to not impact adversely on nature.
There is a commitment that any innovative approach will not ‘reduce the level environmental protection’ which does seem a little different to not weakening protections. However, who would not want a win-win for the economy and nature? Is this paper presenting a worrying rhetoric or a radical and much needed departure from business-as-usual for much needed outcome delivery?
At RSK Wilding, we are interested to know how the single strategic assessment and plan deals with interactions across impacts in the environment, what they will look like, and what the detail of the processes/mechanics will be. Questions aside, the subtleties of the working paper suggest that in moving beyond offsetting and creating the “environmental headroom” for development there will be some considerable insights and analytics involved. The positive outcomes and process start to sound like previously proposed Environmental Net Gain without the specific title.
As an actor providing conservation covenants and assurance within the new system since the Environment Act 2021, RSK Wilding has a strong interest and expertise in securing obligations for the environment, land use and public amenity. In our view they are also a vital ingredient for the growth of nature markets and provide the robustly assured outcomes required by these new proposals.
We are also actively interested in what looks like a more anticipatory regulatory approach that delivers at strategic scales for nature recovery. There is a need for quality evidence, long-term data, and adaptive approaches to delivery in nature recovery, and with those in place there is significant potential to build on approaches such as District Level Licensing. This could help achieve the stated aim to tackle environmental harms at source, and better enable the Government’s commitment to the growth of nature markets and natural capital flows to deliver nature recovery.
We would welcome clarity for application of Conservation Covenants, roles of Responsible Bodies and how anticipatory regulation approaches can best enable these strategic approaches to deliver win-win solutions for both the economy and nature recovery.