We've written to our MP about the Planning & Infrastructure bill - a heartbreak for nature
- The LANCE Trust
- Sep 3
- 4 min read
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The Planning and Infrastructure Bill 2025 aims to accelerate housing and infrastructure delivery by reforming planning processes, streamlining infrastructure projects, and providing new powers for development corporations and local authorities. However, the bill has been nothing but fear and heartbreak for nature. "The fundamental flaw at the heart of the bill is that its core purpose is to make it easier for developers to destroy species and habitats", says the Wildlife Trusts.
Despite a previous response to the LANCE Trust promising to “Continue to work together to ensure a future that respects both our economic needs and environmental responsibilities,” our MP Sadik Al-Hassan voted in support of the bill so, as climate and biodiversity continues to be under fire from all angles, we followed up with a further letter outlining our concerns.
Amendments have been made to the bill, which you can learn more about here, but we are still deeply concerned. We'd encourage you to also write to Mr Al-Hassan to ensure he understands his constituents' views on giving more power to do irreversible harm to property developers.
Some of the key reasons for our concerns are as follows. These would work well as points to cover in your email/letter. (Send your own email via sadik.alhassan.mp@parliament.uk)
As Chris Hinchliff (ex-Labour MP) points out, many of us do not want more power handed to ‘profit-driven developers, rather than cracking down on their failures’. We do not want our environmental protections ripped up or our local democracy weakened; and we don’t want to reward failure at the expense of people and nature.
We understand some amendments have taken the PI Bill in the right direction but the consensus from many whose expertise we value state that the bill as it stands could be summed in just three words: ‘cash to trash’.
On 18th August, the CIEEM (Chartered Institute of Ecology & Environmental Management), a professional organisation not known for scaremongering, reported that the Treasury is ‘planning to up the ante on its war on nature by scrapping the precautionary principle, reducing the list of protected species and curbing judicial review powers'. If true, this will be potentially devastating to nature recovery. The precautionary principle is written into the UK’s own Environment Act 2021 and is essential for preventing irreversible environmental harm in the face of uncertainty.’
Many organisations have a simple message: Simply put: ‘Scrap Part 3 of the Bill’.
A longer explanation follows:
1. On 25 May, the Office for Environmental Protection provided evidence to the Committee that ‘notwithstanding government’s intent’ the Bill’s provisions as drafted are a regression. They would reduce the level of environmental protection provided for by existing environmental law, specifically the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017.”
2. The loss of the Mitigation Hierarchy will be a crushing blow for protection of both species and habitats. To remind you, the Mitigation Hierarchy seeks to prioritise (a) avoiding negative impacts on biodiversity from the outset followed by (b) minimising the potential negative impacts. Next is (c) rehabilitate any affected ecosystems and at the very last resort (d) implement offsetting measures.
A PI bill that gives the green light to developers to jump straight to (d) ignoring the vital steps of (a), (b) and (c) is truly a retrograde step.
3. The core message consistently relayed from the PM & the Treasury and paraded by the press is that nature is a ‘blocker of development’. This is a complete myth. The evidence available to everyone shows that newts and bats appear in only around 3% of planning appeals. Why should a lie such as this be perpetuated?
4. Losing the mitigation hierarchy will, at worst, result in the most protected species to be lost and leave the most rare of habitats open to destruction. It is a retrograde step that is breath-taking in both its arrogance and lack of understanding on how best to protect our fast-diminishing habitats and rare species. It also opens the door for areas such as Long Ashton to lose important wildlife sites and increase fragmentation that, again, will be a huge step backwards.
4. Whatever the government hopes, this Bill as it stands will not help us reach our international 30 x 30 commitment to restore 30% of our land and ocean as protected areas by 2030. Nor do we want our local biodiversity hotspots, wildlife populations, woodlands and habitats be lost in the hope that they will be replaced elsewhere. Public Health England underscores the need for everyone to have access to nature plus high quality green & blue spaces on their doorsteps.
5. The Green Finance Institute estimates that flooding, wildfires, drought and crop failures linked to climate and nature breakdown will the cost the UK economy £70bn this decade. The roll back of the basic safeguards that will future-proof our environment will not only undermine nature but also weaken economic resilience.
6. Instead of listening to corporations who act with short-term profits uppermost, why not listen to the scientists who clearly state that speed of climate change today is more or less unprecedented. The amount of CO2 that humans have added over just the last 100 years is comparable to the amount that was added over 100 centuries after the last ice age. Combine this with the increasing rates of biodiversity loss – approx. 73% in monitored wildlife populations over the past 50 years – and the ‘safe’ environment in which our global civilisation and populations have flourished is in deep trouble.
7. As the International Court of Justice ruled last month, governments are legally obliged to take urgent climate action whilst in May, the UN Secretary-General called on countries to radically rethink their relationship with nature, warning that biodiversity loss is a global crisis no nation can ignore.
In conclusion, with the UK’s proud history of ground breaking ecological science, this government, in particular, should not adopt a Bill that is such a depressing, debilitating and dangerous regression.
Thank you for your support on this situation - with the EPIC and Woodspring developments fresh in our minds, it's integral we give a voice to nature.
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