Ministers are to reform environmental regulations to stop taxpayers forking out for hugely expensive wildlife protection measures that slow economic development, after £100million was spent on a ‘bat tunnel’.
Steve Reed warned green quangos like English Nature and the Environment Agency to stop burdening key infrastructure and building projects with massive costs that can lead them to be delayed or even abandoned.
The Environment Secretary said he would press ahead with a string of ‘common sense’ reforms designed to streamline the impact of environmental regulations on business and planning.
However, none of the 3,500 pieces of regulatory legislation overseen by the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) will be scrapped.
Changes will include appointing a ‘lead regulator’ so that businesses and developers can deal with a single quango rather than multiple agencies. Existing regulations on protecting creatures like bats and newts will be reviewed ‘to remove duplication, ambiguity and inconsistency’.
Ministers and officials will take ‘stronger oversight’ of decisions made by green quangos.
The moves follow frustration within government that green regulations are holding back efforts to kickstart economic growth, like the pathway for flying mammals on the HS2 rail line in Buckinghamshire.
Mr Reed told Sky News: ‘There will be no more bat tunnels with the Labour government, of the kind we say under the Conservatives.’
The moves follow frustration within government that green regulations are holding back efforts to kickstart economic growth, like the pathway for flying mammals on the HS2 rail line in Buckinghamshire (below)
Environment Secretary Steve Reed is to fast-track a number of recommendations in a government-commissioned review, which cautioned against a ‘bonfire of regulations’ but called for reforms to guidance, regulators and the system.
He told Sky News: ‘There will be no more bat tunnels with the Labour government, of the kind we say under the Conservatives.’
The review found there were more than 3,000 pieces of ‘green tape’, and developers had to seek permissions from multiple regulators, often without speaking to them in advance to understand how the rules would be implemented.
In the wake of comments from Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves claiming the protection of nature such as jumping spiders and newts was blocking new infrastructure and housing, Mr Corry’s review cautioned against the aims of growth and conservation being seen as in ‘direct conflict’.
Reforming the system could deliver better for economic growth and to help nature recover, although there may be some ‘short term trade-offs’, he said.
Mr Corry made a number of recommendations including reviewing the existing catalogue of environmental guidance to remove duplication, ambiguity, or inconsistency.
Environment Department (Defra) officials said work had already begun on a rapid review of the regulations, including efforts to bring down 110 pages of bat guidance to just 10 pages.
Other recommendations the Government is fast-tracking are appointing a single lead regulator for major infrastructure projects, updating regulations to allow regulators to make decisions on which activities should be exempt from environmental permits, and setting up a single planning portal.
A new Defra infrastructure board will speed up delivery of major projects, for example by working with developers at an early stage and ensuring decisions are proportionate, to avoid future bat tunnels or the £15 million kittiwake nesting structures as part of the Hornsea 3 offshore wind farm.
And the Government is bringing forward plans to give more freedom to ‘trusted nature groups’ such as the National Trust to carry out conservation and restoration work without needing multiple permits for schemes such as creating wetlands.
Also being fast-tracked are recommendations for a new ‘nature market accelerator’ to bring coherence to private investment in nature, strategic policy statements for regulators and a continuous programme of reform.
But while the review also suggests reforming the Habitats Regulations, a move strongly resisted by wildlife groups who say they protect hundreds of the most important wildlife sites and species in England, the Government says it has no immediate plans to take up that recommendation.
The Government has already published a planning bill with wide-ranging reforms including streamlining the planning process, changing the way developers meet environmental obligations, and giving communities near new electricity pylons money off their energy bill.
And a nature restoration fund aims to enable developers to pay into a central fund to meet obligations to compensate for lost habitat, and it would then be up to an agency such as Natural England to secure benefits to nature on a ‘strategic’ rather than individual site basis.
Richard Benwell, chief executive of Wildlife and Countryside Link, warned: ‘The Government’s planning reforms fall far short of the win-win approach ministers want and Corry seems to support.’
He said the risk to nature in new Government planning laws were ‘high’ and promised benefits were ‘wafer thin’, as he called for regulatory reform to deliver a simpler, stronger focus on environmental recovery.
And he said: ‘For too long, environmental regulators have been too poor and too weak to enforce the law.
‘Their environmental duties have been too soft and vague to drive environmental recovery.
‘In any reform, Defra must find strength with simplicity: all regulators and regulation must contribute to the urgent action needed to halt environmental decline by 2030.’