Rivers in crisis

The Government’s proposed amendments to the Levelling Up Bill will provide a means of weakening our strongest environmental protections – the Habitats Regulations. These regulations protect our most precious nature sites like the Somerset levels, Norfolk Broads, fragile chalk streams and internationally important wetlands. 

Astonishingly, these changes will require Local Authorities, when making planning decisions, to assume that developments will not damage protected sites – despite their better judgement and own knowledge.  Just as bad, Local Authorities will be obliged to ignore any evidence that suggests otherwise (including, for example, evidence from Government’s own advisors Natural England).  

The Government watchdog, the Office for Environmental Protection has warned that these changes “would demonstrably reduce the level of environmental protection provided for in existing environmental law. They are a regression.”  

The new proposals contradict key principles in environmental law – that a precautionary approach should be taken to avoid damage to our most important wildlife sites, and that where harm does occur, the polluter should pay. The measures that Government wants to rely on instead of legal protections are neither sufficient nor secure, and will see taxpayers (and the environment) picking up the bill, whilst developers enjoy an easier ride, and increased profits.  

The proposed removal of river protections has come after much industry lobbying. But claims that this is necessary because the rules created a ‘housing moratorium’ are highly exaggerated. Nutrient neutrality schemes established by Local Authorities and by Natural England, working with local providers, have offset the pollution that new homes would cause, and enabled housebuilding to go ahead. Removing pollution rules places the wildlife of these special places at risk, and flies in the face of the evidence that schemes across the country show development doesn’t have to come at the expense of our rivers.  

Several Wildlife Trusts have worked on projects to reduce pollution across river catchments for nutrient neutrality schemes that unlock new housebuilding. 

Broken promises

Along England’s south coast, the coastal wetlands of the Solent were already suffocating under algal mats fuelled by excess nutrients from farming and wastewater. Over 60,000 new homes were planned in the local area which would add a further burden from wastewater pollution to the already-degraded site. In 2019, Natural England advised Local Authorities there that only if development could offset its nutrient pollution such that it would be ‘nutrient-neutral’ could the authorities be confident that there would be no adverse effect on the protected habitats, and therefore grant planning permission. Calculators were established allowing offset requirements to be worked out, and the first mitigation schemes were established by 2020.  

Daniel Wynn Head of Nature-based Solutions at Kent wildlife Trust said:

“In Kent, the Stour Catchment is quite literally flooded with nitrates and phosphates from various sources, housebuilding being just one of them. Other sources include the agricultural sector and the poorly maintained Waste-water Treatment Works (WwTW) run by the water companies. Legal policies are in place to ensure that water companies upgrade these WwTWs, but now, who can trust the Government to see this through?

Time and again economic growth has been favoured over environmental protection, and especially now, when the natural capital markets present us with a golden opportunity to imbed green finance within our economy to the benefit of both nature & society, what does the Government do? They get scared and fall back on manifesto commitments to the environment.

This short-term mindset for immediate gain foreshadows all attempts to build the sustainable future we and many others are working towards. We need a systemic change to rewrite our future and cut off future threats to nature and people through building a sustainable economy with nature at its heart.

Our rivers need protection, it is disgraceful that a nationally protected site like the Stodmarsh has been allowed to creep into poor condition because of the rubbish, pollution and sewerage that is allowed to freely flow into the river, a river that used to be the life-support system of our landscape is rapidly turning into the poison that will erode the last pieces of nature still clinging on.

The public has a right to be angry about this, and we stand with them. Nature recovery is fundamental to the health and wellbeing of our society, and we are allowing it to be polluted and ignored – there are other ways, nutrient neutrality is just one of them and a fundamental one for our rivers. If housebuilders and developers get off the hook, then who else will get a free pass to pollute without consequence?"