Measures to unblock much-needed infrastructure projects whilst supporting nature recovery at scale will be included in proposals for the Planning and Infrastructure Bill this year, the Government has announced as part its Plan for Change.

The Government says the common-sense changes will help to deliver on the its commitment to make 150 major infrastructure project decisions by the end of this Parliament, while also helping to halt and reverse the decline of species and natural habitats. The reforms will help to speed up projects, including new wind farms, railways and roads, gigafactories and data centres across the country.

Under current rules, infrastructure projects must secure mitigation or compensation for environmental harm to some protected sites and species before being granted planning permission, adding costs and delays to the planning process. Developers are required to identify and meet environmental obligations, typically on a project-by-project basis, and this misses opportunities to find strategic solutions with the greatest benefits for nature

The Government will set up a Nature Restoration Fund enabling infrastructure builders to meet their environmental obligations faster and at greater scale by pooling contributions from developers to fund larger strategic interventions for nature.

This approach will mean the burden of individual site-level assessments and delivering mitigation and compensation is reduced. In many cases, a single payment will enable development to proceed.

A delivery body such as Natural England will then look at the actions needed to drive protected site and species recovery at a strategic, not site-by-site, scale. They will then take responsibility for securing positive environmental outcomes that infrastructure developers are not in a position to implement independently. These could be delivering a reduction in pollution affecting the water environment or securing nesting habitats to increase the population of a protected species for example.

The changes are intended to get rid of time intensive and costly processes involved in project-specific interventions with payments into the fund allowing building to proceed while wider action is taken to secure the environmental outcomes we need.

To support the government’s growth mission, a new £70 million package for this year was confirmed at the Budget to support the delivery of new infrastructure while boosting nature recovery.

Environment Secretary Steve Reed said:

“Nature and development have been unnecessarily pitted against each other for too long. This has blocked economic growth but done nothing for nature’s recovery. Communities and the environment deserve better than this broken status-quo.

“As part of the Government’s Plan for Change, these reforms will unblock infrastructure projects while protecting the natural environment we all depend on. We can now look forward to 150 key infrastructure projects going ahead within the next few years while also providing more funding to protect and restore nature.”

Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Housing Angela Rayner said:

“We have inherited a failing system that has seen vital infrastructure being held up year after year, while witnessing the devastating decline of our natural environment, precious wildlife, and protected species.

“That’s why we are taking a new approach to reversing this decline, striking the right balance so developers can meet their environmental obligations at pace while removing needless barriers to build the infrastructure that local communities are crying out for.”

Tony Juniper, Chair of Natural England, commented:

“It is evident that we need to take urgent action to address the worsening decline of nature, and we must also lean into the challenges posed by housing and infrastructure shortages.

“We will continue to work with the Government to help deliver their plans – but the two key issues of today, nature and economic recovery, should not be pitted against one another, as we step up efforts to avoid losing what protected remnants of nature remain while also restoring some of what has gone.”

. The proposals are set out in a new working paper with stakeholders including clean power and housing developers, communities, nature service providers and local authorities feeding in views. The working paper will inform the next stage of policy development.

The government intends to use the Planning and Infrastructure Bill to introduce any legislative changes to drive action at a strategic level which will provide certainty for both developers and the environment.

If moved into law these changes would establish a more efficient and effective way for Habitats Regulations and other environmental obligations to be discharged, pooling individual contributions to deliver the strategic interventions necessary to drive nature recovery. 

The proposals will also support the government’s Plan for Change milestone to build 1.5 million new homes, including a £47 million boost to unlock tens of thousands of new homes stalled by nutrient neutrality rules.