Britain’s two leading environmental protection and conservation agencies will be set new objectives to ensure they are not “blocking” development or nature restoration projects, the government will announce on Wednesday.
The Environment Agency (EA) and Natural England will be given clear remits by environment secretary Steve Reed to work for the public and not “get in the way of progress”.
“We will be working with those regulators and others to make sure they are prioritising economic growth,” Reed said in an interview.
The EA is an arm’s-length public body that oversees waterways, environmental permits, fisheries, flooding and waste, while Natural England is in charge of habitat conservation and protected species.
Reed was speaking at a site in Kingsbrook, near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, where 2,500 homes are being developed alongside 100 hectares of wildlife habitat in what he dubbed a “win-win” for both the economy and nature.
The move is the latest effort by the Labour government to put pressure on regulators to refocus on the economy.
The initiative is one of 29 recommendations included in a report published on Wednesday into regulatory reform across the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs. The review was led by Dan Corry, who was head of the Downing Street policy unit under former prime minister Gordon Brown.
“We need growth and we need new homes all over the country. Of course communities will have a say in that but the era where environmental regulations were blocking economic development is over,” Reed said.
“I’m announcing changes to the regulations that will allow us to move ahead with development much faster, but also provide much better protection for nature,” he added.
The environment secretary said his overhaul would prevent a repeat of the £119mn “bat tunnel” being built by High Speed 2. The tunnel, designed to protect a colony of rare Bechstein’s bats, become a symbol of onerous planning rules after the cost of the project was revealed.
Corry said in his report that the current system of environmental regulation was set up “in good faith” but had become inefficient and cumbersome and could be an “impediment to sustainable growth”.
Reed said he would implement nine of Corry’s recommendations as soon as possible, including reviewing environmental compliance guidance to remove duplication, ambiguity or inconsistency. The other 20 proposals were still being examined, he noted.
The government will also adopt Corry’s call for a single lead regulator to oversee each major infrastructure project, to end a “merry-go-round” of developers having to seek approvals from multiple authorities. The lead regulator’s identity could vary depending on the scheme.
Defra said the new approach would be piloted this year, citing the Lower Thames Crossing and Heathrow’s third runway as possible candidates.
Asked about the contentious expansion of Heathrow airport, Reed said: “The days when we allowed environment regulation to get in the way of necessary development went with the Conservative government.”
Ministers will also allow some “low-risk activities” to be exempt from the requirement for environmental permits, and adopt proposals to upgrade Defra’s digital systems for planning advice and set up a new “infrastructure board” for the ministry.
Corry admitted that environmental groups may be “nervous” about whether his recommendations, if badly used, could cause “nature to suffer”. But he added that the status quo was unacceptable.
Reed will announce new freedoms for “trusted nature groups”, such as the National Trust, to carry out conservation and restoration work without needing to apply for several permissions at every stage.
Corry’s report said nature groups and developers had to navigate a “complex patchwork” of more than 3,500 regulations. Although there are no current plans to axe regulations, Reed said he would be “looking at where we can streamline or reduce regulation”.
Under the planning and infrastructure bill, currently in parliament, the government would establish a “nature restoration fund”, allowing developers to discharge their environmental obligations in return for a payment to fund restoration.
But critics of the plan have expressed concern over the lag between habitats being destroyed and then redeveloped elsewhere.
Reed said: “Ecosystems recover at different rates, you can see that on this estate that we’re on right now, they’ve seen a huge increase in different species of birds but building work is still going ahead.”
