Government outlines plans for Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Responding to proposals for the forthcoming Planning and Infrastructure Bill, due to be published on Tuesday, Mike Childs, head of science, policy and research at Friends of the Earth, said:

“The extreme weather seen across the globe is just a taste of things to come if we don’t urgently reduce emissions. But the UK is also one of the most nature depleted countries in the world, so the transition to clean energy mustn’t come at the cost of our precious nature.

“Funds for communities hosting grid lines are certainly welcome and this should be extended to wind and solar farms. It's also encouraging that the under-resourcing of local authority planning departments has been recognised with the proposal to allow councils to charge higher fees. This should go some way to speeding up decisions, but not to the point of entirely eliminating bottlenecks. Given we live in a democracy, it's concerning that planning decisions could be taken out of the hands of elected councillors and passed to unelected officials.

“We will study the detail in the Planning & Infrastructure Bill to assess whether nature will rightly be protected by these plans or steam-rolled in the process to build quickly. If not carefully thought-through, the Nature Restoration Fund could easily favour developers and give them licence to ignore the legal protections afforded to our most valuable wildlife sites."

ENDS