July 2026
Planning reform is never far from the headlines. Whether it’s the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, now an Act; changes to biodiversity net gain, or the forthcoming revamp of the National Planning Policy Framework, there’s always something to keep policy-makers busy. Major infrastructure regularly makes the news as well – the recent review of HS2 which estimated the final cost at up to over £100 billion being a case in point.
As we await a new Prime Minister and a likely new Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (in charge of England’s planning system), this would be an excellent time to give them my new book, Planning for nature: fighting to defend special places for wildlife, which is published this month by Pelagic.
Planning for Nature focuses on planning battles around the UK since the turn of the millennium, particularly how the RSPB, other wildlife bodies and local communities have fought development proposals which would harm some of our most important wildlife sites. Case studies cover many different types of development, from airports to housing, windfarms to golf courses, across every part of the UK. There’s a foreword by RSPB CEO Beccy Speight and a chapter which tells the tale of the origin of the NPPF and my personal involvement in it. I’m very grateful to many members of Link organisations, not just the RSPB, who helped me with research and took me on site visits.
HS2 is one of the case studies. It’s not only one of the most expensive projects in the book, but one of the most damaging to nature, as detailed research by The Wildlife Trusts showed. I tell the story through the prism of two sites, Calvert Jubilee nature reserve in Buckinghamshire and the veteran Cubbington pear tree in Warwickshire. One significantly damaged, the other lost for ever. A relatively small deviation in the HS2 route might have saved these sites and many others, but a commitment to engineering the project so that trains could reach top speeds of 250 mph meant that the route had to be as straight as possible. The irony is that in the latest project reset, top speeds have been cut to save costs, but that’s too late to save nature on the route.
HS2 illustrates what I call the curse of the Big Idea. Someone – usually an influential politician or businessperson – has a Big Idea for an infrastructure project, but by the time that people point out the environmental damage that would be caused, the Big Idea has got significant political weight behind it. A lot of time and effort is then spent by nature conservation bodies trying to stop the Big Idea, or at least come up with less damaging alternatives.
Sometimes this succeeded (Thames Estuary Airport, Dibden Bay port, M4 relief road, Severn Tidal Power) but sometimes it didn’t (HS2 and the Forth and Tay windfarms, for example). Big Ideas also have a tendency to be resurrected, zombie-like, by later generations who fail to learn from history.
It’s not all planning disasters for nature, as I’ve included some positive examples of good planning for nature, such as an urban extension in Aylesbury where the RSPB partnered with Barratt Developments plc and the local authority to build a development where nature was woven into the fabric of the built environment, not just relegated to the adjoining green infrastructure.
Good planning starts with the needs of the natural environment, because ultimately all social and economic activity depends on it. Some years ago, the RSPB, RTPI and CIEEM published a report Planning naturally – spatial planning with nature in mind. I’ve picked up many of its principles and translated them into plain English, while weaving in my own reflections and stories from my own career in planning and nature conservation. Whether you’re the Secretary of State or just someone who wants to protect important places from the danger of bad development, this book is for you.
Simon Marsh MBE MRTPI is currently Planning and Policy Manager for the Herts & Middlesex Wildlife Trust. Previously, he was Head of Nature Protection at the RSPB where he led a team of legal, casework and policy experts to prevent bad development from harming nature.
The opinions expressed in this blog are the authors' and not necessarily those of the wider Link membership.
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