Opinion: Planning and Infrastructure Bill heralds ‘top-down State control’
© Adobe Stock I’ve just been reading the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, prompted to do so by what I’d picked up from the Planning Reform Working Paper on Development and Nature Recovery. Yes, I really do know how to enjoy myself.
My attention was particularly drawn to the proposal in the working paper that developers in future will not be required to carry out environmental mitigation on site, but will pay a sum of money to a “delivery body” to carry out “strategic” works somewhere else.
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The paper asserted that the government would make development easier, but still protect the environment.
It said that site-specific actions “may be effective in addressing the specific impact of a proposal, [but] by not taking a strategic view, we may miss opportunities to support wider objectives for the environment, land use, and public amenity”.
The words “strategic” and “strategically” were used many times, and the intention explicitly stated: “moving more responsibility for planning and implementing these strategic actions onto the state”.
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It was obvious that “somewhere else” will mean “on someone else’s land” and, having read the bill, I now know that Natural England will be authorised to compulsorily purchase farmland, or indeed any sort of open land, including allotments, to carry out environmental works.
This may explain why, in a recent interview, Natural England’s chair Tony Juniper seemed strangely unperturbed by the curtailing of site-specific environmental protection.
In brief, the bill says Natural England will draw up and consult on an Environmental Delivery Plan (EDP) for an area, setting out what environmental features need protection, what conservation measures are needed, and a schedule of the levies to pay for them.
Once the EDP is in place, any development which will affect a protected feature will be subject to the levy.
The developer pays the levy and builds its development, Natural England does something strategic with the money, the public gets the houses, factories or whatever, and nature doesn’t suffer at all. What could go wrong?
Well, during my years in local government, I saw how hard it could be to agree with developers’ payment for things such as highway improvements. And I can’t imagine that agreeing the levy will be much easier.
Local people may not be happy to lose an established woodland on the promise of new woodland five miles away.
Habitats or wildlife lost from a site surely can’t just be replaced or relocated elsewhere.
Then there is the matter of making sure the off-site mitigation is actually carried out in a timely fashion so we don’t end up with lots of development yet no compensatory benefit to the environment.
I am also uneasy that so much power will be devolved to Natural England. Not only will it determine, through EDPs, what environmental works are needed, it will also decide what land it requires to achieve this.
The bill even provides for a second go if the first mitigation is ineffective. I worry that this will allow a state-sponsored body to appropriate as much land as it can, to the detriment of affected landowners.
The government argues that, at present, it is too easy for bats, newts and human “blockers” to hold up essential development.
The bill opens the door to too much top-down state control and a complete disregard for the people who have to live with the consequences.