Doing away with EIA? A brief summary of the Government’s planning reform working paper in relation to Development and Nature Recovery
On 15 December 2024 the Government produced a working paper considering development and nature recovery (Working Paper). The Government is intending to replace environmental impact assessments (EIA) with Environmental Outcome Reporting (as reported here). The Government is proposing a new mechanism to avoid the need for certain environmental impacts to be assessed. We consider the key elements of the Working Paper below.
The Government has been clear about its ambition to “get Britain building again” and to deliver 1.5 million homes over the course of the parliament. At the same time, the Government wants to “rebuild nature” and promote building sustainable homes. The Working Paper suggests that by focusing on delivering strategic action plans for environmental protection (rather than small, time-consuming nature projects linked to particular schemes), it may be possible to streamline the discharging of environmental obligations and help unlock development. The Working Paper identifies three steps to achieve this goal.
Step 1: Shifting to Strategic Action
Under the current system, environmental mitigation is often dealt with on a scheme-by-scheme basis with no regard to wider environmental planning. As a result, there has been limited overall environmental improvement despite the significant expenditure. As it currently stands, the system can be uncertain and costly. Issues relating to nutrient neutrality in particular require significant technical expertise and have resulted in blocks to development for significant periods of time (see our previous article here). The Working Paper suggests that a strategic approach can help provide more certainty for parties seeking to navigate such issues and that a “new legislative route” will be established to achieve this.
Step 2: Moving responsibility for securing strategic environmental action on the state
The Working Paper proposes a framework which would allow for a suitable public delivery body to consider what actions are needed to address an environmental impact strategically. The body will then secure these actions using funding provided by developers (towards a “Nature Restoration Fund” – see below), so environmental impact on a case-by-case basis would not need to be assessed. The Government has suggested that the public delivery body could be a party such as Natural England.
Delivery Plans will be produced by a relevant delivery body and should assess underlying environmental issues and the actions needs to address these issues at a strategic level. Delivery Plans should identify opportunities for further environmental improvement and assess the cost of any proposed intervention. Delivery Plans would be subject to review by the Secretary of State and once approved, the delivery body would be required secure the actions within the Delivery Plans and monitor performance of the plan.
In order to avoid delays on implementation, the Government is proposing to develop the first tranche of Delivery Plans at the same time as the Planning and Infrastructure Bill is being debated / approved in Parliament. It is hoped that this would allow for the new approach to be implemented shortly after the Bill becomes law.
Step 3: A fund for developers
The Government proposes to establish a Nature Restoration Fund which will be used to deliver the actions identified in the Delivery Plans. The intention is that this will not be an additional cost to developers, but rather a mechanism by which a single payment can be made by developers to discharge certain environmental obligations.
If a proposed development is covered by a Delivery Plan, a developer would make a payment to the Nature Restoration Fund rather than going through the current environmental assessment process in relation to the associated environmental impacts. However, if the Delivery Plan did not cover all the impacts, an environmental assessment would still be necessary – but the scope of the assessment would be reduced to exclude any impacts covered by the Delivery Plan.
The intention is that the level of contribution for different types of development would be set out in a public schedule to secure the actions of the Development Plan and by pooling contributions, nature projects capable of unlocking multiple developments may be delivered quicker and at no greater cost to the developer. The Working Paper confirms that in some instances, upfront funding by a delivery body may be provided.
Next steps
The Government is seeking views on the proposals set out in the Working Paper and in particular whether this would result in “tangible improvements to the developer experience” when supporting nature recovery.
It will be interesting to see how much of this proposal comes into force and if it does, how Delivery Plans will sit alongside existing EIA requirements if at all and/or the new framework of Environmental Outcome Reporting (EOR) intended to replace EIA (see here for further details on EOR). In particular, there will be a question as to how or if decision makers should assess cumulative impacts of a scheme, when some of that assessment is being dealt with under a Delivery Plan. Delivery Plans are explicitly not intended to have any impact on the implementation of mandatory biodiversity net gain requirements, but we will have to see if that position holds as the proposals come forward.
Strategic planning is required to deal with environmental impacts such as nutrient neutrality. If adopted, hopefully the proposals will streamline compliance with environmental requirements and help the Government realise its housebuilding ambitions.
