Ministers are seeking a blank cheque to change environmental protections

Despite the shocking proof of catastrophic climate change that we have seen this summer, the government is proceeding with plans that could weaken some of our most important environmental protections. The plans have arrived largely under the radar, tucked away in part five of the levelling up and regeneration bill, which fails to deliver much in the way of levelling up or meaningful support for communities.

What the bill will do though, through part five, is remove the requirement for current environmental assessments, known as environmental impact assessments (EIAs) and strategic environmental assessments (SEAs), and replace them with environmental outcome reports (EORs). EIAs and SEAs have been vital for protecting sites of local, national and international environmental importance for decades; they set out and assess the impacts that developments may have on the environment and help local authorities decide on planning applications. They are especially important given the environment and climate emergency that we face – an emergency that was recognised by parliament in 2019.

The levelling up and regeneration bill gives the Secretary of State sweeping powers to set new “environmental outcomes”. EORs will allow consent to be given for development projects as long as they meet certain conditions designed to achieve the environmental outcomes set by the Secretary of State. EORs will supersede EIAs and SEAs and can even override the protections offered by the habitats regulations, which protect our most precious nature sites and endangered species from harm. As long as a nationally set environmental outcome is furthered, other nature impacts can potentially be overlooked.

This opens the door to developments that could destroy important local nature sites on the grounds that they meet an environmental outcome set at national level by the government. Shockingly, we have not yet been given any indication of what these national environmental outcomes will be, or how EORs will work on the ground. The bill is silent on detail for the new processes and says that it will be provided through regulations. Regulations, also known as secondary legislation, cannot be amended by MPs so the government will pretty much have a free hand to set any environmental outcomes and structure EORs as it wishes.

Ministers are seeking a blank cheque to change environmental protections in the planning system. Given the Conservative Party’s cosy relationships with developers, we can make an informed guess as to which direction the changes are going to go in. Development on nature-rich sites that provide havens for wildlife and help us to store carbon and mitigate climate change could be given the go ahead on the grounds of contributing to national environmental outcomes, set by ministers.

It is important to bear in mind that this is a government that has repeatedly refused to come forward with an all-out, once-and-for-all ban on fracking and underground coal gasification, and one that is still considering a new coal mine in Cumbria.

In my constituency of Wirral West, a conditional licence was granted for underground coal gasification (UCG) in the Dee Estuary in 2013 under the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government. The company that wanted to carrying out UCG in the Dee Estuary, a ‘site of special scientific interest’ and place of international importance for birdlife, thankfully stepped away from pursuing it there after a great deal of local protest in a campaign that I led.

Nevertheless, had the company decided to go ahead with this development, an EIA and an SEA would very likely have had to be carried out before UCG could have commenced. Under the new arrangements provided for in the bill, there are no guarantees that any such detailed environmental assessments would be required.

It cannot be right that a power grab by central government could undermine vital existing protections for precious coastal environments, the green belt, highly valued green spaces and nature-rich sites. The levelling up and regeneration bill represents a very real threat to nature’s recovery and net zero. Without significant amendment, part five could actively contribute to further ecological decline and climate change.