Why the Planning and Infrastructure Bill poses a threat to our rivers

Our rivers are struggling in the face of numerous pressures including pollution, abstraction, and physical modification; no rivers in England currently get a clean bill of health and only 17% of our globally important chalk streams are in their natural state. At the same time, the UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, with nearly one in six species at risk of extinction. The iconic wild Atlantic salmon, for example, was recently reclassified as endangered in Great Britain, due to a 30-50% decline since 2006. Now is the time for us all to step up for nature, across all sectors and walks of life. However, with its new Planning and Infrastructure Bill, the Government seems to be moving in the opposite direction.

In pursuit of the Government’s economic growth mission, this Bill seems to be overly focused on development and industry, missing the crucial point that properly functioning natural systems are fundamental to economic security and success. We rely on our natural environment to sustain happy and healthy communities, with food on our tables, water in our taps, and protections against the unavoidable impacts of climate change. In pursuing sweeping changes to planning policy, some senior members of the Government continue to make inaccurate claims that nature is a blocker to house and infrastructure building, despite their own research finding very little evidence of this. Representatives of developers themselves have spoken out to criticise this narrative that pitches nature against development. We must challenge this inaccurate and tunnel-visioned approach to policymaking, especially when it results in the regressive proposals contained in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill.

The Planning and Infrastructure Bill was introduced by the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) as a “win-win” for nature and development. However, it is looking more and more like a “lose-lose”, putting nature even more at risk of harm and throwing developers and emerging nature markets into the unknown. Environmental groups, sustainable development professionals, legal experts, and the Office for Environmental Protection – the Government’s own watchdog - have all come to the same conclusion that the Planning and Infrastructure Bill will lead to a serious regression in environmental law.

What exactly is wrong with the Bill?

As currently drafted, the Bill will significantly weaken protections for some of our most precious natural habitats and species, including iconic rivers, rare chalk streams and the endangered Atlantic salmon. This is because the new approach to developer mitigation set out in Part 3 of the Bill:

• Bypasses the mitigation hierarchy, which is a long-established principle that developers must avoid harm as a first step. Instead, the Bill jumps straight into allowing developers to offset the damage they cause.

• Weakens the degree of certainty around mitigation measures put in place, requiring only that the Secretary of State for MHCLG is confident that the measures are “likely” to be enough, whereas the current legal test is to be sure “beyond all reasonable scientific doubt”.

• Allows damage to go ahead before mitigation measures are in place, risking irreversible harm to the environment while we all wait and hope for help to arrive.

• Requires Natural England to take account of the “economic viability” of development when setting the rates that developers have to pay to cover mitigation measures – the question is, who will pay the rest of the cost of mitigation?

What does this mean for rivers and their catchments?

Environmental groups have highlighted that certain systems- and landscape-scale issues could be effectively managed through a strategic approach, for example nutrient pollution or water availability. However, we have been clear in all our briefings on this topic that certain fundamental principles would need to be upheld, e.g. mitigation hierarchy, mitigation ahead of damage. Despite our clear evidence, these principles are now under threat in government proposals.

We need to be sure that developers are doing all they can to avoid harm to our precious rivers as a first step, rather than skipping straight to mitigating or compensating. We need to be more certain than “likely” that measures will be enough to stop development impacting our rivers. Finally, we need to be sure when promised measures will come into effect in order to protect our rivers; this should ideally be before damage is done. As it stands, MHCLG’s proposed approach gives us none of these assurances.

Our rivers are in a poor state – this is well known. In fact, the Government made it a key pillar of their election campaign and immediately re-made their promise to prioritise cleaning up our rivers, lakes, and seas when they arrived in office. However, this Bill is a step in the wrong direction, eroding well-established protections for our environment, undermining critical principles of environmental law, and stepping into a degree of uncertainty that is unacceptable in the face of climate and biodiversity crises.