COMMENT The new Labour government has indicated a change in approach to nutrient neutrality in a joint letter to nature conservation organisations from the housing secretary, Angela Rayner and environment secretary, Steve Reed.
There is little detail, but rumours since the letter was published in July have indicated that the existing system of requiring developers to prove nutrient neutrality before getting planning permission will be altered to them only having to do so before the houses are occupied. This would allow construction to start while the purchase of credits or construction of wetlands is dealt with.
The chair of Natural England, Tony Juniper, has proposed a switch of focus from individual developments to catchment-wide schemes. This would certainly dovetail nicely with the top tier of the government’s Environmental Land Management scheme.
That apex scheme is Landscape Recovery which will provide public money for catchment-wide schemes designed to improve water quality, biodiversity and other environmental targets.
Talk but no stats
Labour’s stated aim is to “unlock the building of homes affected by nutrient neutrality without weakening environmental protections”. They are certainly going to find it politically tricky to tinker too much with the existing system. They opposed the then-Conservative government amendments to the Levelling Up Bill in the House of Lords, which would have scrapped nutrient neutrality.
There is much talk of house construction being held up by nutrient neutrality, but one of the major obstacles is the failure of LPAs to process the section 106 agreements which implement the schemes.
The delay at the LPAs is caused by the lack of resourcing for them to deal with this additional burden and there are many schemes held up by 106 approval, but we are not hearing those statistics.
Natural England is the statutory consultee for nutrient neutrality schemes, and it too is under resourcing pressure. Consistency of guidance and standardisation of approach would help enormously but it is fighting battles on many fronts.
Labour has promised additional funding for 300 more planning officers but as that works out at less than one per LPA it will probably be about as effective as adding a third trombonist to the Titanic orchestra.
The proposed changes to nutrient neutrality at least seem sensible and would be consistent with maintaining a private market, which the previous government set such store in – it said private schemes should not be crowded out by public ones.
A private market for nutrient neutrality credits is a flexible way to meet demand, avoiding the long-term nature and cost of wetland creation which is another way to reduce nutrient pollution.
Market distortion
The public nutrient neutrality schemes are only operating in a limited number of catchment areas. They are one solution to the problem, but they are already distorting the private market as the price per credit is fixed and is much lower than the open market price.
Given the stated ambition of not crowding out the public market there needs to be a clearly defined approach to the blending of public and private financing of mitigation schemes.
With biodiversity net gain, we have seen how a statutory scheme can work and some of the elements of that regime could be replicated in the nutrient neutrality sphere. A national register of schemes and template agreements would simplify procedures and speed up the process.
A stark difference with the BNG regime is that statutory credits are priced at such a high level that they won’t impact the private market. There is also a spatial multiplier applied which means that if you must fall back on BNG statutory credits, you must buy double the amount.
These safety measures ensure the independence and integrity of the private market which the government sees as playing a central role in environmental goods delivery. If that is so for BNG, why is the same protection not there for nutrient neutrality?
Ben Sharples is a partner at Michelmores
Photo © Michelmores
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