Elliott Malik: Environmental regulations are failing to restore nature whilst blocking housebuilding

Elliott Malik is the Nature Programme Officer of the Conservative Environment Network and the Director of the Conservative Friends of CANZUK.

Britain is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. Unfortunately, regulations designed to protect the environment are not only failing to restore nature but are also suffocating developers with needlessly complex red tape. This is the worst of both worlds.

That is why the Conservative Environment Network has launched ‘In Pursuit of Harmony’, which offers bold new ideas to streamline red tape, harness private investment, and give Britain new homes and more nature.

The most important proposal in our paper is our common sense approach to Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG). For those unfamiliar with BNG, it was introduced by the last Conservative government. It requires almost all new housing projects to improve biodiversity, either within the development (known as ‘on-site’) or by participating in a natural capital market. Developers can access this market to purchase BNG credits from landowners to restore nature elsewhere (known as ‘off-site’).

This concept of BNG is important for several reasons. Off-site BNG credits could lead to a £3 billion boost for farmers and rural communities, as farmers turn poor agricultural land into havens for nature and sell this uplift to developers. It could transform soulless developments into real homes and communities, bringing pride back to communities and encouraging people to put down roots. Perhaps most importantly, it can help fulfil our conservative duty to protect our natural inheritance. This will allow us to once again take pride in the natural world which past generations have left for us, and restore it for the generations after us to enjoy.

Although the concept of BNG is sound, the system we have today has become bloated and unwieldy, with disparate requirements shoehorned into it.

Notably, on-site BNG – which can be difficult to achieve – has been prioritised at the expense of off-site. It was hoped that if housebuilders promised more local amenities, this could make planning applications more likely to succeed. The government then forced developers to create a higher BNG uplift in off-site restoration projects, effectively penalising those who want to purchase credits to improve biodiversity elsewhere.

These political choices hamstrung BNG from the outset.

By disincentivising developers from creating nature off-site, we created an inflexible system for housebuilders whilst stifling the benefits for landowners, farmers, and our economy. It has also made developing smaller plots of land considerably more complicated and expensive because developers – mainly SMEs – must either overcome the difficulty of improving biodiversity in small areas or purchase very expensive credits elsewhere. This is a tragedy, both for housebuilding and for nature restoration.

BNG has clear problems, but its potential remains compelling. The solution is just as straightforward as BNG should be, which is why CEN is proposing to make BNG fit for purpose by getting rid of the distinction between off-site and on-site BNG. This will return BNG to what it was initially intended to be: a flexible, nature restoring policy which adds to our economy. If we want to build more houses, we must not penalise developers for choosing to improve the natural environment off-site.

As more developers choose to purchase credits, the BNG natural capital market will blossom, creating an important new revenue stream for farmers and landowners who can turn unusable areas of land into new habitats.

Reforming BNG is vitally important, but we can go further. Needless red tape makes it incredibly burdensome to bring nature to new communities. We should be weaving nature into our communities to improve our environment, make our communities more beautiful, and to create pride in place. Some of these changes are simple, such as extending permitted development rights to ponds, and freeing businesses to install façade gardens.

We also recommend that our land use becomes more efficient and housing more attractive, through ‘gentle densification’. This is important because we want the homes of the future to be places people can be proud to live in, and from which new communities can form.

This paper recommends targeted and profoundly conservative reforms. If we liberate developers from unnecessary regulations, we can unleash the power of free markets: restoring nature, providing new income to farmers, and building many more houses. It is possible to achieve the twin goals of building the houses we need and restoring nature. We know what to do; now we must pursue harmony between our built and natural environments.