Dame E.J. Milner-Gulland , Professor of Biodiversity in Oxford University's Department of Biology, explains why conservationists and researchers are concerned about the proposed Planning & Infrastructure Bill, and what needs to change for UK growth to not come at nature's expense.
EJ Milner-GullandThe UK Government has vowed to 'build, baby, build' to deliver 1.5 million homes across the country by 2029 . There is no question that England urgently needs more homes, but can this really be achieved without worsening the biodiversity and nature crises? - particularly since the Government's proposals to 'streamline' environmental regulations have got wildlife charities up in arms .
Part 3 of the Planning & Infrastructure Bill , currently being debated in Parliament, is an attempt to square that circle. It proposes a new way to manage development's environmental impacts: Environmental Delivery Plans (EDPs) and a Nature Restoration Fund (NRF). The stated aim is that these will speed up decisions while improving outcomes for nature at landscape scale. Under an approved EDP, developers could pay into the NRF rather than deliver all mitigation themselves. Natural England would design EDPs and the Secretary of State would approve them.
This sounds good in theory but researchers like myself worry that without proper safeguards, these proposals won't actually deliver real benefits for nature. Assessing environmental impacts and appropriate mitigating action is a complex process; short-circuiting it runs the risk that nature-restoring activities are rushed, inadequate and ineffective.
So, what needs to happen to get Part 3 right - for nature and for people?
1) Ensure compensation is a last resort
Using habitat banks would mean that we don't trade nature destruction now for uncertain future gains in nature; we'd know that the promised benefits for nature had been delivered before going ahead with developments.
Since the 1970s, the Mitigation Hierarchy has provided a credible framework of prioritised, sequential stages to guide users to address impacts on the environment. The framework consists of four iterative steps that should be followed in order; avoid harm, minimise impacts, restore/rehabilitate, then (only as a last resort) offset impacts. As the Bill currently stands, there is no assurance that the mitigation hierarchy will be followed , even for rare, fragile, protected or irreplaceable habitats and species. This poses the risk that developers will be free to skip straight to 'pay and build.'
2) Don't confuse compensation with 'nature recovery'
A key rationale for the nature levy in the Bill is to optimise scarce resources for nature recovery, by combining levy payments from developers with public funding to Natural England for biodiversity restoration. In principle this should enable more 'bang for buck' for nature.
But compensatory payments for damage to nature are by definition not contributing to nature recovery. That's what 'compensatory' implies; the payments are to bring nature back up to the level that it was at before the damage was incurred.
Pooling compensation with public restoration budgets does not magically create extra nature unless the compensatory money paid into the fund demonstrably goes beyond replacing losses. The Bill and associated guidance must be transparent about how this will be achieved. As a general principle, we should avoid diluting the term 'nature positive' to mean any good things done for nature; it must mean measurable net gains.
3) Make sure the levy really does deliver for nature
Compensatory payments for damage to nature are by definition not contributing to nature recovery.
A key component of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill's proposal is to charge a levy on developers, which would be deployed for nature conservation or restoration elsewhere. The pricing of the levy will be crucial, both in terms of incentivising developers to follow the mitigation hierarchy (avoiding impacts first rather than going straight to making a payment), and in terms of providing enough money for nature.
Fees must be scaled to quantified impact using robust metrics and risk-based multipliers (to account for uncertainty, time-lags, likelihood of success, etc.). For instance, the Newt Conservation Partnership , which provides compensation for damage caused by developers to great crested newt habitats, uses a ratio of 4:1 for every pond lost.
Using multipliers would mean that the levy should 'buy' more than enough nature, with the worst case being 'enough nature'. This is the same approach as engineers would use when designing a bridge, to ensure that under normal (and plausible extreme) operating conditions, it will not collapse.
The UK Government should learn from New South Wales's Biodiversity Conservation Fund, which demonstrated that levies set too low - or decoupled from measured impacts - under-deliver for nature and erode confidence. Reforms passed in 2024 now restrict levy use to a last resort and promote building an advance supply of credits, to avoid demands for credits outstripping supply.
4) Use advance delivery and banked habitat to cut delays and ecological risk
Creating habitat before impacts occur reduces time-lags and makes sure that nature improvements are actually delivered. This gives developers and nature managers the certainty they need. Habitat banking and pre-purchased units - already encouraged under Biodiversity Net Gain - should be core tools within EDPs.
5) Plan at the right scale - and keep benefits local and fair
Strategic national-level planning for nature is valuable, but communities who host development should also see ecological benefits near their homes - for instance, access to natural areas, flood mitigation, and recreational spaces. Local Nature Recovery Strategies should be used to steer investment at local and regional levels, while allowing national pooling of resources only where it clearly delivers greater ecological benefit and does not hollow out local access.
6) Resource monitoring and enforcement
Where developers state they will use approaches to minimise environmental harms and/or introduce biodiversity measures within developments themselves, it is essential that these are followed through and that delivery is monitored and enforced. But this remains challenging due to lack of capacity within local planning authorities; this needs urgent investment.
Lessons from the great crested newt
The debate around Part 3 of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill shows how strongly people feel about the need to ensure nature is not the loser as we provide the housing that people desperately need.
England's approach to protecting the great crested newt shows how development and nature recovery can work hand in hand for some species, when done strategically. In the past, every housing site that might affect this protected species required its own lengthy licence and surveys - slowing projects and often delivering poor outcomes for the newts themselves.
To fix this, Natural England introduced 'district licensing': developers now pay a standard fee based on the level of impact, and specialist partners create and manage new habitats in advance of any habitat being lost. The compensation is delivered at high multipliers and is monitored for decades.
This simple change - planning habitat creation upfront, at landscape scale, and under independent oversight - has produced faster, more certain decisions for developers and measurably better results for wildlife. It shows that when the rules are clear, the data robust and delivery trusted, we can build new homes and create more thriving places for nature.
Going forward
When the rules are clear, the data robust, and delivery trusted, we can both build new homes and create more thriving nature.
Nature itself, and the relationships that people have with nature, are complicated and context-specific. This means there can be no single approach to balance biodiversity improvements in one place with biodiversity losses in another. For some species, like newts, you could improve newt habitats in one place so that their population grows overall, even while putting housing on another area of their habitat. Whereas you can't increase the total number of healthy functioning chalk streams or areas of ancient woodland in England - the loss of any part of these ecosystems is a loss for ever. A Bill designed to deliver for nature must be flexible enough to accommodate these differences.
The housing crisis is urgent and needs to be fixed; so does the nature crisis. But they don't need to be in opposition if the lessons from experience in the UK and overseas are learnt, and incorporated into policy. The debate around Part 3 of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill shows how strongly people feel about the need to ensure nature is not the loser as we provide the housing that people desperately need. But strategic planning for both nature and people is possible, if the evidence is acted upon.
