What environmental managers need to know about UK planning reforms: interview with Jason Reeves

How will the Labour government’s reforms to planning permissions impact the environmental management industry?

The UK Labour government’s proposed planning reforms are set to transform the landscape of environmental management.

Central to these changes is a shift in regulatory logic—from preventing environmental harm to mitigating it after the fact.   

One of the most controversial elements is the proposed nature restoration levy, which allows developers to pay into a central fund rather than directly addressing the environmental impact of their projects on-site.  

This change effectively transfers responsibility for monitoring and mitigation from developers to Natural England, the public body responsible for conserving England's ecology.

Instead of requiring developers to meet clear environmental standards upfront, Natural England will be tasked with protecting certain designated ‘features’ of a given area subject to development.  

It will be their responsibility to estimate the damage that is likely to be done and to establish a plan to mitigate that damage – although there appears to be no mandatory timeframe for this response, which raises concerns about delayed mitigation.  

The issue, of course, is that preventing pollution - especially of stubborn substances like PFAS or heavy metals - is far easier than mitigating it.  

The new model raises fundamental questions about the future of environmental governance. Can conservation at one site truly offset degradation at another? And does this shift represent innovative flexibility or a dangerous weakening of oversight?  

As the reforms move forward, those working in environmental monitoring and protection will need to adapt to a system where, in certain areas where EDPs are established, detection and remediation for particular ecological features may take precedence over prevention—and where financial contributions may be seen as a substitute for environmental responsibility. 

To dive deeper into these reforms and get a sense of how environmental management is going to change in the near future, EnvirotechOnline spoke to Jason Reeves, Head of Policy at the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management, which is the leading professional membership body representing ecologists and environmental managers in the UK, Ireland and abroad.  

How will these reforms of planning permissions affect how we monitor environmental pollution?  

It is unclear at the moment. We do not know the scope (one or more environmental "feature") and extent (how big a piece of land and/or sea) of any environmental delivery plans (EDPs).  

Furthermore, we do have serious concerns that Natural England (NE) is being asked to develop, implement and report on EDPs. Given that NE is already under-resourced to deliver other areas of its remit (such as protected species licencing), we are extremely cautious of whether Natural England currently has the ability to meaningfully monitor environmental outcomes. Furthermore, we question whether the same organisation should be in charge of both delivery and marking their own homework.  

There is precedent for these concerns: we have seen how under-resourced Local Authorities have struggled to effectively monitor and enforce environmental improvements agreed for planning permissions. There is a useful report on this from Wild Justice showing how environmental outcomes required by planning consents have not been delivered in the past. 

In your opinion, do these reforms constitute deregulation?  

Potentially, yes – our response to the Bill sets out our position on this. We have written to the Office for Environmental Protection asking that they look into this, as well. 

Our concern is that the Bill creates broad and sweeping powers to disregard protections within an EDP which could constitute a regression in environmental protections.

This potentially means disregarding the mitigation hierarchy and jumping straight to paying the levy – whereas there may well have been viable options to avoid the impact if ecological expertise was sought optioneering and project design stage.  

The Bill gives broad powers to the Housing Secretary of State (such as being able to issue guidance that NE must have regard to).  

As far as we can see, there appears to be no temporal requirement in the Bill that mitigation works happen before the impact from development occurs, although Steve Reed, the Secretary of State for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, has since stated that £14 million allocated to the Nature Restoration Fund is to help kick-start mitigation work for future development impacts.   

But the 5-year reporting intervals for EDPs mean that we may not know if something has gone wrong in a timely manner.   

Another area that is absent from the Bill is consideration for irreplaceable habitats (e.g., ancient woodlands). We are advocating that irreplaceable habitats be outside the scope of EDPs unless there is an overriding imperative (as with the Habitats Regulations tests). 

As a tangent, the economic viability element of the Bill is a concern, too. When setting out its levy charges, Natural England will not be able to charge more than would be viable for a developer. This potentially means nature conservation being underfunded and is contrary to the 'polluter pays' principle. In economic terms, if the damage is too great that the cost will be too high for the developer, that should be the mechanism to guide development elsewhere. 

What sorts of environmental surveying will remain?  

This is unclear from the Bill. As it stands, EDPs will potentially remove the need for surveys where they are implemented in relation to the specific "feature(s)" for which the EDP is created. That could be one or more "feature", for example, nutrient neutrality or a particular protected species.  

There is a question as to how the Housing Secretary will be assured that an environmental "overall improvement" is delivered. We assume there will need to be baseline surveys for the "feature(s)" before the EDP is created, but it is not stated where that information will come from.   

Surveys will remain a requirement outside of EDPs.   

How will environmental regulation adapt – will it turn to the growing movement of citizen science?  

There have been suggestions that government will look to NGOs and citizen science for baseline survey data in order to inform the creation of EDPs. But this has its issues; in particular, patchy location and taxa coverage - and lack of data is not lack of presence.   

We recognise that there are opportunities to make a strategic move forward, to create win-wins for nature and development, but this is not it. It is frustrating that the Government has pushed ahead so quickly with this, seemingly ignoring concerns from environmental bodies and not coming to us in the first place to ask how the planning system could be improved. 

CIEEM continues to work with the government, other parliamentarians, civil servants and other stakeholders on how the Bill can be improved to deliver for both development and nature recovery.

Ideally, we’d like a pause on Part 3 of the Bill to give time to meaningful co-design of the process, but we realise that the government wants to push ahead with the Bill as quickly as possible and has a substantial majority in the Commons to do so. We are currently drafting amendments to the Bill to address some of the major flaws we see with it.