I am deeply concerned that the Planning & Infrastructure Bill, in its current form, represents a betrayal of the Government’s promises to protect and restore nature.

Nature in the UK has been in profound decline since I've first been aware of it, with successive legislation since the Wildlife & Countryside Act 1981 serving only to protect key sites of national and international importance rather than restore these and use them as a framework for expansion and recovery. 

I had hopes that this new Government might put resource into achieving the 30 x 30 targets for biodiversity set in law in 2021 by a previous Government’s Environment Act so that we would finally deliver large-scale recovery of nature in addition to protection of what remains. 

Wildlife sites will be moved around like Lego

Instead, the Government has chosen to revert to the old canard of nature as a luxury we can't afford, and an impediment to quality of life rather than its foundation. It has inserted weasel words into Part three of its Planning and Infrastructure Bill and proposes to treat our key wildlife sites as inert bricks that may be put together, taken apart and moved around England when convenient, like pieces of Lego. Rather than the foundations and keystones they are, the movement and undermining of these sites will cause the whole edifice to continue to degrade towards collapse; promises will be broken along with those foundations.

In the North West, we would be concerned about encroachment onto and near to nature reserves like the Manchester Peatlands, Longworth Clough Nature Reserve in Belmont, Rimrose Valley in Merseyside, and, in the Irish Sea, Shell Flat and Lune Deep Special Area of Conservation. These are all vitally important areas for wildlife and part of the UK’s Nature Recovery Network.

In my personal letter to Sir Lindsay Hoyle, I wrote: “Foundations in Chorley constituency include part of the extensive West Pennine Moors Site of Special Scientific Interest and all of the tiny Charnock Richard Pasture SSSI next to the polluted Clancutt Brook, and keystone species of wildlife, including water vole, otter, and dipper.”

Safeguards have been rejected

Part three of the Bill replaces key environmental protections with a weaker substitute, described by the Government’s own nature watchdog as ‘environmentally regressive’ and which put irreplaceable habitats and threatened species at risk. The Government say this will resolve development delays but have been unable to provide the evidence for this. At Commons committee stage of the Bill, the Government rejected amendments designed to provide the safeguards that The Wildlife Trusts, other environmental organisations and the Office for Environmental Protection demanded.  

The false claims that nature is a "blocker" to economic growth, made repeatedly by the Chancellor, are based on a failure to understand how nature underpins our economy, and boosts people’s health. This contempt for nature is evident in wider Treasury decisions, including threats to cut support for nature-friendly farming and with money raised from water company fines to restore polluted rivers instead earmarked for general Treasury funds. 

There is still time to change course. Please ask the Government to remove Part three of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill to prevent environmental regression - which will harm the natural world, people and the economy itself.

People thrive with nature nearby - and the benefits are felt in our economy and our society. The Government had committed to ‘save Britain’s beautiful countryside and reverse the tide of destruction of the natural environment’, but the current approach led by the Chancellor leaves this promise in tatters and betrays millions of people.

You can read more about how MPs and Ministers can stand up for nature on this link:  

Thank you. 

Yours sincerely,

David Dunlop

Senior Conservation Officer for Policy & Advocacy

This letter is supported by all Trust officers and has been sent to all of our local MPs today, asking for their support