Industry insiders say that they expect the UK Government to change nutrient neutrality rules – designed to protect rivers from the pollution from new homes – to become a pre-occupation requirement. Currently nutrient mitigation must be secured prior to permission being granted.
Gabriel Connor-Streich, Chief Executive of Greenshank Environmental, said, “In principle this makes sense; it aligns with biodiversity net gain and gives developers more time to secure a solution.”
The new government was elected on a mandate to get Britain building again, alongside protecting and improving the natural environment. They have said that nature recovery remains a top priority alongside the need to overhaul the planning system, grow the economy, and reach net zero.
Labour has pledged to build 1.5m new homes by the end of this parliament and used the King’s Speech to indicate its intention to change nutrient neutrality rules. However, the government has also said that it will only legislate if it is confident that it can deliver positive housing and nature outcomes together.
Angela Rayner, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, and Steve Reed, Secretary of State for the Environment, said in a joint statement, “When it comes to the planning system’s role in providing the nature and housing we need, we know that the status quo is not working. Environmental assessments and case-by-case negotiations of mitigation and compensation measures often slow down the delivery of much need housing and infrastructure. So instead, we are determined to transform the system to ensure a win-win for housebuilding and nature.
“We want to use the value gained from enabling development to proceed quickly and smoothly to support nature recovery – and to do so in a way that gives everyone involved greater certainty. And we will only legislate if we are confident that it achieves these outcomes.”
The property industry has long complained that Natural England has blocked large numbers of new developments because nutrient neutrality rules have been too stringent.
The Home Builders Federation told the FT that Natural England’s approach had “resulted in five years of delays to housebuilding, stalling the delivery of some 160,000 homes”.
Lawrence Turner, Director of planning consultancy, Boyer, has said that he believes the introduction of legislation would be the most effective way to deal with the phosphates and nitrates issue and kickstart the economy through a housebuilding boom.
He said, “Under the proposed model, developers would be allowed to begin construction on housing projects that increase phosphates or nitrates in river catchments, with the understanding that mitigations will be agreed upon and implemented during the construction phase rather than developers having to fund or introduce complicated and often prohibitively costly mitigation themselves for agreement before planning permission is granted. This new approach aims to speed up development without compromising environmental protections.
“Labour has emphasised the importance of proper consultation with environmental groups in order to ensure that the changes to the nutrient neutrality rules achieve the desired outcomes of both enabling development and supporting nature recovery.
“Many of our housebuilder clients will now be able to begin the preparation of planning applications for future phases of development and construct and sell homes. This is something they haven’t been able to do up until now as either the mitigation wasn’t available or it was too expensive to ensure the schemes remained viable. This will mean that more developers will have the confidence to be able to progress development sites and acquire new land, building more homes more quickly.”
Connor-Streich said, “We would welcome a more strategic approach as long as the system is established to take account of the true cost of delivering nutrient mitigation schemes.
“We also need to see any roll out managed really carefully so that developers don’t just sit on their hands hoping a cheaper, centralised system will quickly materialise. It won’t. Getting a proper strategic approach to function properly will be a long process and it will fail if government caves to pressure to try and do it cheaply.”