British Government goes rogue on the environment

Friday 14th February 2025

"Focus on getting things built and stop worrying about the bats and the newts,” UK Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, recently told us - while signalling support for airport expansion despite the contribution of air travel to climate change; the UK Government appears to be going rogue on biodiversity and environmental protection... and the "UK's first green chancellor" appears to have morphed into something else, entirely.

Under new proposals, developers’ work to mitigate environmental harm will likely shift from a focus on the development sites themselves – to ‘offsetting’ onsite biodiversity loss by boosting biodiversity elsewhere – via a proposed Nature Restoration Fund.

“Avoiding and minimising direct environmental damage should be the first step, so the British Government’s planned shift to an offsetting approach is deeply concerning – it is in fact anti-environmental, and likely to worsen the UK’s biodiversity crisis” – Luke Rowlands, Director, EcoCognito

These offsetting payments will remove onsite environmental obligations from developers – enabling the Labour Government, and private companies, to move ahead more rapidly with their developments, by-passing existing levels of environmental protection and scrutiny.

Sadly this new approach will weaken environmental protections and outcomes by shifting Britain from the ‘polluter-pays’ principle to a ‘pay to pollute’ offsetting model – undermining current best practice, which focuses on applying the ‘proximity principle’ which minimises and addresses environmental damage where it originates; an approach seen as more effective at protecting biodiversity, and the wider environment.

‘The prevailing narrative from the Government often suggests that we must choose between building homes for people and protecting our natural environment, and that nature is somehow a blocker to growth’ – excerpt from letter written by ecologists, architects and engineers expressing concern to Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves

Worse still, sources close to government tell us some political insiders have questioned whether the flagship biodiversity net gain (BNG) policy policy is needed, if their new Nature Restoration Fund is adopted, as reported by ENDS – if that change comes to pass, biodiversity outcomes are likely to deteriorate further still; biodiversity net gain currently means all new development projects must achieve a 10% net gain in either biodiversity or habitat, although there are some exceptions.

We will address Rachel Reeves’ comments on airport expansion in due course… and we will update the British Government’s environmental policy shifts here on this blog, as the emerging situation develops.