Research undertaken by the Institute for Public Policy Research (Strategic Planning for Green Prosperity, February 2025) has found that:
“significant non-planning related barriers exist in the delivery of house building, such as developers slowing their build rates or securing permission and then not building. Additionally, the failure to join up key infrastructure projects for development is also slowing the delivery of new homes and economic growth”.
Unless the Bill is amended the resultant Act will remove essential protection laws, and with them the requirement for developers to submit with their applications, biodiversity and ecology appraisals informed by on-site surveys listing species and habitats present, detailing impacts and measures needed to enhance ecology and biodiversity, and where necessary measures needed to avoid or mitigate harm.
The Planning and Infrastructure Bill, if not amended, will allow their removal, and permit development without regard to impacts on wildlife and habitats.
This is an appalling prospect, not least because the UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. The consequences would be catastrophic.
Unfortunately, the authors of the Bill neither recognise nor acknowledge that “nature, and the biodiversity that underpins it, ultimately sustains our economies, livelihoods and well-being, and so our decisions must take into account the true value of the goods and services we derive from it”, including natural capital and ecosystem services (Economics of Biodiversity The Dasgupta Review 2021).
Will Sussex MPs seek to retain laws and policies that protect wildlife and habitats, and amend the Bill accordingly?
Yours faithfully
Dr R F Smith, Trustee CPRE Sussex