Comment

Nutrient neutrality March 2022 update: It just got a whole lot bigger!

Under the, no doubt crowd pleasing, title of “Delivering the Environment Act: taking action to protect and restore nature”, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs delivered a Ministerial statement on 16 March 2022. This has far reaching consequences for the delivery of housing across England.

There is much to applaud within the statement and related Green Paper, which sets out the Government’s “initial thoughts on driving nature recovery in England via our protected sites and species protections.”

For starters, the overarching objective to deliver ‘30 by 30’ (to protect 30% of our land and sea and halt bio-diversity decline by 2030), will be welcomed by the vast majority. As will any attempts to simplify the current range of tiered national and international designations (e.g. Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), Special Areas of Conservation (SAC) and Special Protection Areas (SPA)) into a less prescriptive and legalised system.

However, although not covered in any detail in the Green Paper, the Ministerial statement does emphasise the impacts of nutrient pollution on many freshwater and estuary habitats protected by national and international ecological designations. This is an issue all too familiar to parts of the South East, where Natural England have advised some Local Planning Authorities can only approve certain projects, including housing, if they are certain that nutrient outputs will have no negative effect on the protected sites.

This has had significant consequences, including stalling housing development across affected areas, most notably across South Hampshire. It has taken some time to deliver suitable mitigation solutions across affected LPAs, and even now some are still grappling with finding appropriate solutions that Natural England are prepared to accept.

What will concern many developers and housebuilders is the Ministerial statement’s reference to the updated advice from Natural England following its further work on assessing habitats. This advice was in the form of a letter, also dated 16 March, sent to the 32 Local Planning Authorities currently affected by nutrient pollution, as well as 42 new LPAs where to date this issue has not been raised, and where it is extremely unlikely that any mitigation solutions will be in place. Given the experiences of delays to determining applications in areas such as South Hampshire, on face value this will have major consequences for housing delivery.

The statement acknowledges that to date the approach to finding solutions has too often been complex, time-consuming and costly to apply. It is also keen to stress that the Government will take action to make sure that the homes communities need are delivered and to address pollution at source. There are helpful references to the existing nutrient calculator tool, and providing funding to LPAs to assist with developing solutions. Many developers and housebuilders will also welcome the references to the pledges from water companies to provide new funding for nature-based ‘strategic solutions’, as well as exploring legislation changes to strengthen requirements to reduce nutrients at source. This is a welcome recognition that this is an issue that should not rest at the door of developers and housebuilders alone.

However, in the absence of any definate mitigation solutions, this is merely lip service. No doubt many LPAs, developers and housebuilders in the newly affected areas will be scrambling to confirm whether sites subject to current planning applications or Local Plan allocations will now require a mitigation solution to demonstrate nutrient neutrality.

The consultation on the Green Paper closes at 11:45pm on 11 May 2022. 

For more information on how this update could affect your development or to discuss nutrient neutrality please contact Simon Packer or James Cording.

22 March 2022