Environment (Local Nature Recovery Strategies) (Procedure) Regulations 2023

Baroness Willis of Summertown Excerpts

Monday 10th July 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Willis of Summertown]

That this House regrets that the Environment (Local Nature Recovery Strategies) (Procedure) Regulations 2023 and accompanying guidance give insufficient clarity of purpose and, combined with the approach taken by the Government, will impact on the practical implementation of the guidance and the achievement of the Government’s environmental targets.

Relevant document: 36th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee

[Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)]

My Lords, formally, this is a Motion to Regret on the instrument, but really it is a Motion to Regret the lost opportunity to halt the decline of biodiversity in the UK. We are now one of the most species-depauperate countries in the world. The UK not only comes at the bottom of the list of G7 countries in terms of the amount of biodiversity retained—it is also third from the bottom of the list of all European countries, ahead of only Ireland and Malta.

This really serious situation that we face as a country in terms of declining biodiversity has been stated many times in this House and in the other place, and ambitious targets to restore nature have been most recently outlined in the Environment Act. For example, in January we had secondary legislation laid on environmental targets, which contained legally binding targets for restoration of certain species in areas with important habitats. These legally binding targets include protecting and restoring at least 500,000 hectares of wildlife-rich habitats by 31 December 2042; ending species decline by 2030; and our 30 by 30 target, which the Minister knows as well as I do, to protect 30% of our land and ocean by 2030. So we should all be really heartened by these ambitious targets—I certainly was—but they do not describe the specific mechanisms by which these targets are to be delivered on the ground. For this, we were promised secondary legislation, such as the instrument that we have before us today, on the local nature recovery strategies.

The point of this statutory instrument is to enable the delivery of a consensual process whereby 48 local nature partnerships across England will map out what remains of the important habitats in their county and then develop a plan for nature recovery. The intention is that these spatial plans for biodiversity recovery will then influence critical land-use decisions and be used alongside strategic planning for food, infrastructure and other land uses. So far, so good—but when it was published in May, a couple of months ago, I and many others were really dismayed by the content of these local nature recovery strategies and the regulations delivered by the secondary legislation. I would go so far as to say that I simply do not believe that what we have in front of us in secondary legislation will achieve the purpose that it is set out to deliver, which is to reverse England’s biodiversity loss.

I want to express my regret for three missed opportunities in this legislation. First, I regret the fact that in the guidance there is no mention of the specific legally binding targets, which I have just mentioned, set out in the environment targets regulations, published in January. Instead, the guidance refers to the vague sentence that strategies

“should also reflect what contribution the strategy area can make to national environmental objectives, commitments and targets”.

It does go on to say

“including those legally binding targets established by the Act”,

but what that means in practice is that each of the 48 partnerships, which in themselves will have another 30 or 40 members, will have to come up with their own individual targets and priorities of recovering and enhancing biodiversity and hopefully—I am not sure how—they are all going to add up to meet the Government’s legally binding targets.

I simply cannot understand how this will work without some overarching centralised co-ordination and specifically determined species and habitat targets provided, as a starting point if nothing else, for each county. In effect, we are asking all 48 authorities to work in the dark. Equally problematic under this heading is the fact that there is almost no guidance given to identifying or creating corridors for nature. Without enabling wildlife to move across landscapes, we end up with a series of islands surrounded by a desert of agricultural land or a desert of an urban area. The islands become smaller and smaller, and that is an absolutely guaranteed way to lose species, for species to go extinct.

I know the Minister understands the importance of nature recovery and corridors, which we have discussed many times, but how can he be sure that the local nature recovery strategies we have in front of us will actually add up to these overall targets, which are legally binding? Because there is no mention of it in any of this statutory guidance.

Closely linked to this is my second regret, which is that the local nature recovery strategy guidance is totally silent on output format and the development of a centralised platforms. All we have is regulation 19, which requires that local authorities publish their local nature recovery strategies on their own council websites or, if they cannot do that, they can create their own website and put a link back to the council website. In practice, this means the creation of 48 different websites and, very likely, 48 different formats for the local nature recovery strategies of each of the 48 partnerships.

There is also no guidance or requirement for a centralised data deposition, so the data could all be in completely different formats and we would have no idea how it all added up to meet the legally binding targets we agreed in January. Again, I simply cannot understand how this will work. It will make it even more difficult to determine a transparent overall picture across England and to know how we are doing on reaching these legally binding targets. So I would appreciate it if the Minister would explain how his department will support a regularly updated digital platform for local nature recovery strategies that is transparent, digital and consistent, so that everyone is starting with a level playing field, both the public and developers alike. I sincerely hope that this is an area that we can make some progress on.

Probably the most worrying, and my third and final regret, is that the statutory guidance does not set out how the strategies, once developed, will actually inform decision-making. There is a duty for public bodies to “have regard” for local nature recovery strategies. This, quite frankly, is feeble. We know that it will not change decisions on planning, licensing or incentives for better land management. There is one phrase that I find it equally worrying in terms of governance in the accompanying guidance for landowners:

“The strategies do not force the owners or managers of the land identified to make any changes. Instead, the government is encouraging action through, for example, opportunities for funding and investment”.


So, in effect, there is no requirement for owners or managers of land on which potentially important habitats are located to do anything if they do not wish to, nor is there any clarification on incentives to take part—for example, through payments via the Environmental Land Management Scheme.

To summarise, even though the Government have just announced a really welcome £14 million pot to fund local nature recovery strategies, all the effort and expenditure could be wasted if they do not actually influence what is happening on the ground due to this vague guidance on targets, lack of centralised co-ordination and extremely weak governance on their delivery. I would go as far as to say that, while the legal link between local nature recovery strategies and decisions by public authorities is weak, I actually regret that no amount of guidance can fill the gap, even if it were significantly better guidance than we have today, due to this very weak governance. I look forward to the Minister’s response and just note that we could make progress on this issue in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, where noble Lords across the House are supporting amendments to fix the legal weaknesses at the heart of the problem.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, who has made an excellent case today as to why the omissions in these regulations need to be urgently addressed.

Throughout the development of local nature recovery strategies, we have been hugely supportive of the concept. There is no doubt that they have the potential to be an important vehicle for the delivery of many of our environmental ambitions set out in the Environment Act. Already, around the country, councils are coming together at county level to address the challenges of meeting our environmental targets locally, and they want to make the process work. However, as the Minister knows, we already have concerns about the status of those local nature recovery strategies once they are produced. Without the right legislative underpinning, there is a risk that much of their work will go to waste and we will lose the enthusiasm and good will of those involved in the process.

Under the current wording of the Environment Act, planning authorities are required only to have regard to the LNRS as part of a general biodiversity duty. That is why the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and I have tabled an amendment to the levelling-up Bill which would require local planning authorities to deliver the objectives of the relevant local nature recovery strategy in their development plans. We will debate this further when the amendment comes up on Report, and I hope that we can make some progress at that point in resolving the issue. I am very grateful to the Minister for meeting us to discuss this last week. I hope that he is able to come back with a little more information—we were rather hoping for some alternative proposals. Given that the amendment is potentially due next week, we are running out of time. I just say that as a general nudge. I mention it also because it is symptomatic of a very narrow interpretation of the role of local nature recovery strategies, combined with overreliance on guidance notes rather than the formal statutory underpinning which can deliver real change.

I thought that the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, made a very powerful case for the combined local nature recovery strategies to connect up and form a national nature recovery network. This could provide the essence of the well-known Lawton ambition of “bigger, better and more joined up”, which everyone understands to be the holy grail of nature recovery. But nowhere in these regulations is this spelled out as an objective. There is no requirement for county-based representatives to look over the border to see what approach their neighbours are taking. There is no overarching objective of joined-up corridors across the country which could facilitate the spread of flora and fauna across wide landscapes. There is no requirement to look at the wider geographic challenges or to use the opportunities that the current protected landscapes such as national parks and AONBs could provide.

While there is a role for Natural England in advising on the habitat and species priorities, there is no obligation for wider collaboration between local nature recovery partnerships or for a national map to be produced. Why has Defra largely omitted the need for such national connectivity from the regulations and guidance, which the noble Baroness has been a great champion of and has made a powerful case for today?

There is a further obstacle to the development of a national nature recovery plan in that each local authority is required to publish its recovery strategy on its website. That is good, but there is no requirement for these websites to be on a shared platform. There is a danger that we will end up with 48 individual proposals, with artificial political boundaries, that bear no relation to one other in the language used, impact on habitat and species revival, and other deliverables towards the targets. Equally, there is no requirement for quality control, so the local nature recovery strategies may well vary in scope, evidence and ambition.

Can the Minister explain whether a national online platform for LNRSs is being considered, and how we can be assured that a quality assurance programme will be enacted to ensure that the objectives set out in the Environment Act really are being delivered? I look forward to his response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Very soon—it will not happen slowly. While local nature recovery strategies should consider both habitats and species, this guidance refers more often to habitats. This is because habitat types give a helpful indication of an area’s general environmental characteristics, including which species it is likely to support and what environmental benefits it may provide.

Responsible authorities should refer to habitat types throughout their statement of biodiversity priorities to help them link together and connect the statement to the local habitat map. This is not in any way suggesting that habitats are more important than species. The importance of species is repeatedly highlighted throughout the guidance. I take the noble Baroness’s point, but I hope that we are moving in the right direction.

For nature to recover we need people to work together and, crucially, the people who decide how land is used and managed to be involved in identifying nature recovery proposals. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, is right that farmers are pivotal in this. The best available data and the insights of experts such as the noble Baroness are hugely important too. We know that we need to target our efforts where they will achieve the most. Understanding this requires expertise and evidence, and the need for local nature recovery strategies to be evidence based is stated clearly in the statutory guidance. Our experts in Natural England have a crucial role to play.

The local nature recovery strategy regulations make Natural England a “supporting authority” in the preparation of all strategies. This gives it a strong say in what each strategy includes and in providing further guidance and advice if needed. We are keen that other experts also engage with the preparation of strategies in areas that they are interested in, to help strengthen and improve them, and they will have the opportunity to do so. As a Berkshire boy, I will be very upset if they are not talking to Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire and any other surrounding areas producing these. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, made the point about getting people from Cornwall and Devon to get on and talk to each other. That will be an achievement that he will be able to look back on as something that is good not only for those two counties but for nature.

This input from technical experts needs to be part of a wider open and collaborative approach—this will ensure that each strategy also benefits from local knowledge and understanding of the conditions on the ground—and to help build support for the action to be delivered. This is because local nature recovery strategies are designed to encourage and incentivise landowners and managers into making positive changes, not to force them to do so. Biodiversity net gain, the biodiversity duty on public authorities, planning policy, and private and public funding will work together to encourage action to be taken, with progress reviewed every few years and plans updated to reflect what has been done and what still needs to be done.

I know from previous conversations that the noble Baroness has concerns about biodiversity net gain. However, we are starting to see, through our early-stage pilot programmes, some really exciting connectivity being delivered in places such as London. The London Wildlife Trust is delivering biodiversity net gain in south-east London, with a development which will include 4,800 new homes over the next 20 years, alongside 20 hectares of parkland, connecting it to nature reserves at Kidbrooke Green and Birdbrook Road. This is an example of the sort of project that we want to see emerging out of a variety of different things that have come from the Environment Act.

Involving the landowners and managers in the preparation process and helping them to understand both the evidence base and the support from local communities for what changes are proposed can work alongside these other measures to persuade and enable changes to be made. Part of how we encourage this engagement is by being sparing in our use of technical language. However, I assure the noble Baroness that each strategy will still have a strong technical underpinning. How many strategies have sat on local government officials’ shelves and not been accessed by the public—people who mind about their local nature reserve and mind about their little piece of England, which they want to see restored? This must be, in the words and delivery, accessible, but it must also have that technical heft. Again, the role of Natural England in supporting every responsible authority is key, explaining the importance of increasing habitat connectivity and extent in planning for nature’s recovery.

With local nature recovery strategy preparation under way across England, we are at a critical point on the road towards reversing nature’s decline. Groups such as the RSPB have responded to the progress we have made to endorse the crucial role that strategies have to play, through ensuring that local action can deliver national progress for nature’s recovery. For them to truly succeed, we need to work together and to lend our support to encouraging others to do this. I urge the noble Baroness to add her considerable expertise to this common cause, which I know that she does, and for this House to provide their clear support.

Those words that politicians say but usually do not mean, about their door always being open, I really do mean. I am very keen for the noble Baroness and others who are greatly exercised that we get this right to meet me and my officials and to ensure that they are conveying their inevitable concerns about different parts of this very important work that we are doing, so that we can get this right.

[Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)]

I thank the Minister for his response. We have had a good debate. I am mindful of time, so I will keep it short. I just say to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that I do not disagree; I think these need to be locally delivered. If you do not have local buy-in, it will not happen. All I am asking is that we also have scientific data underpinning those local delivery plans so that, at the end of the day, we can all say “Ah, species declines have stopped. Things are going up”. Without co-ordinating that centrally, I still struggle to see how we are going to add everything up.