Robert Oates is CEO of leading UK ecology consultancy, Arbtech
The Government’s recent Planning Reform working paper ‘Development and Nature Recovery’ has both merits and deficiencies, the latter of which needs urgent attention if this Parliament can harmonise the competing demands of housing delivery and halting biodiversity decline.
The most significant shortcoming of the paper is the possibility of a single, up-front payment to a Nature Recovery Fund that enables development to take place without site-specific surveys and mitigation.
The most alarming aspect of having a central ‘pot’ for biodiversity is the risk of marginalising communities by enabling the eradication of the matrix of habitats and biodiversity in urban and suburban areas. There is every chance that the places and communities in greatest need would see the money go elsewhere. It’s a tough argument to make that this would not happen, given the tax on planning gain to pass go and collect $200 for developers would positively incentivise the maximisation of gross developable value at the expense of habitats and species. If you have already “paid” the tax to offset biodiversity loss on site, then why would you bother to engage the mitigation hierarchy at all?
arbI cannot think of anything I’d like to see less than the UK’s cities and towns becoming ecologically inert deserts where people at the lower end of the socioeconomic strata are stranded in barren, concrete landscapes and forced to pay to travel to and benefit from contact with nature. This is a basic human right as far as I’m concerned and one that won’t be met due to the cumulative impact of the working paper’s proposals on place, and thus society. A world in which only the wealthy can afford to live in places that have prioritised the retention and enhancement of biodiversity is not a world this government can be proud of.
Aside from the societal impact, the ‘single payment’ system is not a fair and proportionate solution for developers, particularly SMEs, who shouldn’t have their planning gain universally taxed to fund nature recovery that, for the most part, has become necessary due to impacts of intensive agriculture as opposed to development activity. If a developer isn’t impacting on, for example, newts why should they have to pay to create a habitat for them elsewhere? Put another way, those developers that are not impacting upon nature, or already being sensitive to biodiversity, are unfairly burdened, while those creating the worst impact are incentivised to do so.
So, what is the solution? Myriad actions need to be implemented to ensure the friction points in the system are removed in favour of a more streamlined and efficient approach. These would focus on reducing planning decision delays and providing certainty for developers through data capture, private sector alliances, prohibiting committees to debate ecology in determining applications without independent scientific support for their arguments, and advocating for professional judgement using the best available evidence when assessing impacts, rather than one-size fits all approaches to conservancy. All this alongside enhanced monitoring, and the centralisation of best practice standards by government. These tactics would enable a more efficient system and negate the need for a stealth tax on planning gain with all of the deleterious consequences that comes with it (those mentioned above).