UK ministers set to change environmental rules to boost housebuilding

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Ministers are set to change environmental rules to allow house builders in England to start projects that could pollute rivers as long as they carry out mitigation work before selling the homes.

The nutrient neutrality rules were introduced last September when the House of Lords rejected attempts by the Conservative government to repeal EU-derived laws that force developers to minimise pollution from new projects.

The regulations, introduced under the EU habitat directive and reinforced by a 2018 European Court of Justice ruling, have been imposed on dozens of local councils in England, requiring them to curb river pollution – particularly from phosphates, nitrates and sulphates – by restricting housing construction.

The real estate industry has long complained that Natural England, a government agency, has blocked a large number of new development projects. because of regulations put in place to protect the country’s water resources.

The House Building Federation, a trade body, said the agency’s approach had “resulted in five years of delay” buildingdelaying the delivery of about 160,000 houses”.

Planning experts say the guidance has exacerbated Britain’s chronic housing shortage, with the annual supply of new homes at its lowest level since the 1920s, even as demand is high.

Labour, which has pledged to build 1.5 million new homes by the end of this parliamentary term, signalled its intention to change the neutrality rules last week. The King’s Speech.

The package of legislation includes a planning bill that proposes a solution to the impasse between developers and Natural England by “using development to fund nature restoration where both are currently stalled”.

On a weekend letters For green groups, housing minister Angela Rayner and environment minister Steve Reed said the government planned to overhaul “nutrient neutrality” rules because they were “not effective”.

“When it comes to the role of the planning system in delivering the nature and housing we need, we know that the status quo is no longer working,” they write.

“We want to use the value gained from permitting development to move quickly and smoothly to support nature restoration — and do it in a way that provides more certainty for everyone involved,” he said, adding that case-by-case negotiations on environmental mitigation and compensation often slow down housing delivery.

The solution Rayner and Reed propose to address this delay is to allow developers to start construction and then reach agreement on mitigation measures, such as creating new wetlands elsewhere to absorb pollution.

But residents will not be allowed to move into those new homes until the measures are completed, as part of “Grampian Solution” was first raised by the two ministers last fall.

The Housing Builders Federation said it welcomed the “more pragmatic approach” but said details of the policy had not been communicated to developers. It warned that the time it would take to find land for mitigation schemes and implement them could still delay new home building.

The Conservatives are expected to criticise Labour for the role of members of Sir Keir Starmer’s party in blocking the Conservatives from the House of Lords last year.

But Labour said the defeated Lords amendment proposed scrapping the legal requirement for housebuilders to invest in local wetlands, and instead using taxpayers’ money to boost Natural England’s programme to reduce nutrients such as phosphates and nitrates entering waterways.

“After that defeat, the Conservatives said they would bring the amendment back but they never cared, they just ran away,” said a Labour figure.

Tony Juniper, chairman of Natural England, said Labour’s plan was not about “changing the rules” but “changing the route to delivery”.

“If we are serious about restoring nature, we cannot reduce protections, but what we can do is achieve those protections and go further in faster and more effective ways,” he added.