Laws protecting wildlife and habitats are not ‘growth blockers’

Letter published by the West Sussex County Times, 26 June 2025

Dear Sir,

Laws protecting wildlife and habitats are not ‘growth blockers’

The Government incorrectly believes that laws protecting wildlife and habitats, and the requirement for councils to consider environmental impacts when determining planning applications hinder development and national growth. These essential protections, however, are neither barriers to development nor growth blockers.

Research undertaken by the Institute for Public Policy Research (Strategic Planning for Green Prosperity, February 2025) has found that:

“significant non-planning related barriers exist in the delivery of house building, such as developers slowing their build rates or securing permission and then not building. Additionally, the failure to join up key infrastructure projects for development is also slowing the delivery of new homes and economic growth”.

Unless the Planning and Infrastructure Bill is amended the resultant Act will remove essential wildlife and habitat protections, And with them the requirement for developers to submit with their applications biodiversity and ecology appraisals informed by on-site surveys listing species and habitats present, detailing impacts and measures needed to enhance ecology and biodiversity, and where necessary measures needed to avoid or mitigate harm.

This is an appalling prospect, not least because the UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world.  The consequences will be catastrophic.

Unfortunately, the authors of the Bill neither recognise nor acknowledge that “nature, and the biodiversity that underpins it, ultimately sustains our economies, livelihoods and well-being, and so our decisions must take into account the true value of the goods and services we derive from it”, including natural capital and ecosystem services (Economics of Biodiversity The Dasgupta Review 2021).

Will Sussex MPs seek to retain laws and policies that protect wildlife and habitats, and amend the Bill accordingly?

Yours faithfully,

Dr R F Smith

Trustee CPRE Sussex