October 2024
Earlier this month, Tony Juniper the Chair of Natural England launched the Agency's ‘State of Natural Capital Report'. Its message was loud and clear. Nature and economic growth go hand in hand. Nature is essential to our health, well-being and security.
The report backs-up this message with evidence. That pollination underpins £500 million of benefits to the agricultural industry should really be no surprise when we think about it, yet we are seeing a decline in insect life threatening our food supply. As Tony made clear:
“Nature isn't different from growth - it's at the heart of it, you cannot grow the economy if we don't grow nature. According to recent estimates the current value of the UK's natural wealth was just over £1.5 trillion”. He went on to say that “nature is a long-term investment”.
The RSPB agrees, and that is why we continue to push hard for investment into the natural environment and the systems that it supports. As part of this we see a vital role for the planning system in integrating growth, social infrastructure, and environmental needs. To deliver economic growth alongside nature’s recovery we need a healthy planning system, and that needs investment too.
Indeed, earlier this year a host of nature charities, business groups and unions came together through the umbrella of Wildlife and Countryside Link to write to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Rt Hon Rachel Reeves MP, to highlight the critical importance of ensuring that all organisations involved in the planning system have sufficient resources and specialist skills to ensure that environmental matters are dealt with properly in plan and decision making.
Together we recommended that additional funding be allocated within the Autumn Budget and Single Year Spending Review to support planning related functions and environmental expertise in all environmental agencies, including Natural England and the Environment Agency. We also called for proactive measures to be taken to raise the profile and image of the planning profession, and to encourage and enable more to enter it over the coming years.
The importance of this just been highlighted by a letter sent by Natural England to Local Planning Authorities across England saying that the Agency is no longer able to provide advice on all planning applications, but from now on will simply focus on larger, more controversial, and higher impact development proposals. Nature charities have been seeing this pattern develop and grow for some time, and against a backdrop of budget cuts over successive years and difficulties in attracting and retaining planners. Now it’s official.
At first glance, not advising on smaller-scale development proposals might not seem like much of a problem. But it is. Any harmful impacts to nature in connection with any single small application maybe one thing, but amplified across many hundreds and thousands of development proposals over time they become something very different. The problem is made worse by the fact that Local Planning Authorities have been starved of resources over the past decade, and often lack sufficient staff, particularly with specialist skills such as ecologists, to ensure that the right outcomes for nature can be secured. Nature charities are not able to fill the void either due to our own resource and capacity constraints. This all amounts to another hit for nature at the very time it needs to be given a break.
Tony juniper is right - nature is indeed a long-term investment. The lack of funding in nature and environmental planning over recent years is becoming increasingly evident and it takes us in precisely the opposite direction to that we all need to go in if we are to improve our health, wealth, and security. Now is the time to make that down-payment - there is no time to lose in this critical decade for nature’s recovery.
We very much hope that the Chancellor will seize the opportunity in the forthcoming Autumn Budget and Single Year Spending Review to begin to put matters right by investing in environmental planning and the systems that underpin nature’s recovery. Then, not only will Tony’s Agency then be better placed once more to provide the planning advice that it should, but it will give us all a brighter, more secure, and more hopeful future.
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