Nutrient Neutrality and its implications for housing development and environmental conservation

Explore the thought-provoking perspectives of our Head of Ecology, Dominic Woodfield, as he delves into the contentious issue of Nutrient Neutrality and its implications for housing development and environmental conservation. In this article, Dominic examines the debate surrounding this topic, highlighting its impact on the housing sector and environmental standards.

The last few weeks have seen nutrient neutrality emerge as a political football. The concept, which essentially seeks to ensure housing delivery is delivered alongside appropriate pollution controls when proposed in the most sensitive river catchments, has been pointed to by sections of the housebuilding sector as a major block or brake on meeting local and national housing needs. The figures around the true magnitude of this block or brake, and/or whether there are other more important factors at play, are hotly disputed. Nevertheless, there has been intense lobbying on the issue by the house-building sector and the Conservative Government has listened. Michael Gove recently announced the introduction of an amendment to the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill to remove the obligation for local councils to decide against approving housing in areas where the issue is a factor. Essentially it amounts to an invitation or even a direction to override the advice and guidance of the statutory nature conservation organisation Natural England in such cases.

The wording of the amendment has especially raised eyebrows. It essentially invites planning authorities to assume there is no problem, even where there is pretty clear evidence of one. Environmental campaigners say that this is further evidence of an alleged ‘attack on nature’ by the present Government, itself a continuation of a phrase coined under the ill-fated Truss regime. Some say it is also symptomatic of a slide in environmental standards post-Brexit.

There does seem little doubt that this approach of overriding evidence would not be tolerated were it to be taken to the European Courts – a route no longer open to environmental campaigners. This prompted the RSPB, normally an organisation disposed to gentle persuasion and working with the grain of Government, to issue a tweet calling Gove, Sunak et al ‘liars’ in the context of their previous assurances that there would be no relaxation of environmental standards post-Brexit. The tweet caused something of a media storm leading to the RSPB, shortly afterwards, apologising for making it personal, whilst not actually deleting the tweet.

Is the house-building sector right to target nutrient neutrality? Well, it’s difficult not to have some sympathy with their position that it is unfair to beat the industry with a stick whilst rivers like the Wye continue to deteriorate due to run-off from industrial agriculture. There is no real dispute that Britain’s waterways and, in some cases, its estuarine and inshore waters too, are suffering from a lack of control of pollution inputs, but it is also not the house builders’ fault that failures in infrastructure investment by the major water companies are as much to blame as increased households. The utility companies have been accused of storing up funds, including those from developer contributions, and preferring distribution to shareholders over improving the efficiency and capacity of sewage treatment facilities. The left has jumped on this as evidence of the failure of privatisation.

For a while this didn’t seem to be an issue that divided the two major parties. But the prominence of public concern about the poor state of our rivers looks very likely to now be an election bellwether. Have the Conservatives jumped the right way? The fact that Labour voted against the amendments to the Levelling Up bill in the Lords, suggest that they, at least, think they have not.