Nature is not a blocker to housing growth, an inquiry by MPs has found, in direct conflict with claims made by ministers.
Toby Perkins, the Labour chair of the environmental audit committee, said nature was being scapegoated, and that rather than being a block to growth, it was necessary for building resilient towns and neighbourhoods.
In its report on environmental sustainability and housing growth, the cross-party committee challenged the “lazy narrative”, which has been promoted by UK government ministers, that nature was a blocker or an inconvenience to delivering housing.
The report said severe skills shortages in ecology, planning and construction would be what made it impossible for the government to deliver on its housebuilding ambitions.
Perkins said: “The government’s target to build 1.5m homes by the end of this parliament is incredibly ambitious. Achieving it alongside our existing targets on climate and sustainability – which are set in law – will require effort on a scale not seen before.
“That certainly will not be achieved by scapegoating nature, claiming that it is a ‘blocker’ to housing delivery. We are clear in our report: a healthy environment is essential to building resilient towns and cities. It must not be sidelined.”
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Experts say the planning and infrastructure bill – in its final stages before being passed into law – rolls back environmental law to allow developers to sidestep the need for surveys and mitigation on the site of any environmental damage by paying into a central nature recovery fund for improvements to be made elsewhere.
Ecologists, environmental groups and some MPs have been fighting for changes to the draft legislation to keep protections for wildlife and rare habitats as they are. But the secretary of state for housing, Steve Reed, told MPs to vote down the changes during a Commons vote on the bill this week.
The committee said it had concerns that the legislation as drafted would mean the government would miss its legally defined target to halt the decline of nature by 2030 and reverse it by 2042.
The report found that local planning authorities were severely underresourced in ecological skills. It heard evidence that staff at Natural England were “stretched to their limits”, that the skills needed to deliver the ecological aspects of planning reforms “simply do not exist at the scale, quality or capacity that is needed”.
This comes as Natural England will take on a major role in planning under the government’s changes. The body will oversee the national nature restoration fund, which will be funded by developers and will enable builders to sidestep environmental obligations at a particular site – even if it is a landscape protected for its wildlife.
Critics of the bill have questioned the conflict of interest in giving Natural England new funds from developers while expecting the body to regulate their actions.
