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Planning and Infrastructure Bill and weakening biodiversity gain rules will be disastrous, say RSPB and Wildlife Trusts
Jane DaltonTuesday 25 November 2025 00:02 GMTComments
open image in galleryStripping away nature protections will leave wildlife vulnerable, environmentalists argue (Getty Images)
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The government’s “blinkered” drive for development could speed up nature loss to the point of no return, top conservation campaigners are warning at the 11th hour before a new law is passed.
The RSPB and Wildlife Trusts say Labour’s efforts to speed up building projects will prove disastrous for wildlife, habitats and green spaces – and could mean the greater use of chemicals.
The organisations are pulling out all the stops to try to have the most “destructive” parts of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill amended in its final stages in the Lords.
Ministers are also considering watering down “biodiversity net gain” rules, and experts fear next week’s Budget may contain more anti-nature measures.
But 65,000 people emailed their MPs to ask them to back amendments to the planning bill creating environmental protections.
Labour MPs have privately admitted they support opponents of the bill but they were whipped to vote against the eco amendments.
RSPB chief executive Beccy Speight said ecosystems depend on a diversity of species. “It's an interconnected web - it's like a game of Jenga. If you keep taking pieces out, at some point that tower will fall. I don't think the Planning Bill recognises that.”
Chancellor Rachel Reeves is accused of tearing up protection for the natural world to try to give the economy a boost.
open image in galleryThe government wants to build 1.5m homes (PA Archive)The Bill overrides habitat and nature protections, which the government claims are a barrier to its target of building 1.5 million houses.
But 10 days ago, the cross-party Environmental Audit Committee found nature was not a block to new housing, branding anti-nature rhetoric “a lazy narrative” and warning that it was essential for resilient neighbourhoods.
The wildlife organisations say the moves go against “all good scientific evidence” and create a “perfect storm” threatening ancient woodland and wildlife including badgers, dormice and sand lizards.
Craig Bennett, of the Wildlife Trusts, said the bill also removed local decision-making.
He said: “If in about one or two years’ time, local communities start seeing bulldozers moving in on some of their most treasured green spaces, where they walk their dogs, and the first they have been aware of some of the threat is when they see that, I think people will get very frustrated with the government.”
Wildlife on a site covered by a new environmental delivery plan will have to be removed, said Sally Hayns, chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management.
“Either they've got to be found, caught and removed, which probably won’t happen, or they have to be killed,” she said.
“I can't see the public supporting developers literally sanitising sites to make use of this new approach.”
Controversially, the legislation allows developers to tick their environmental obligation box simply by paying a nature restoration levy.
open image in galleryBats control insect populations (Getty Images/iStockphoto)“Every bat eats between two and 4,000 tiny insects a night, and if you didn't have bats as natural pest controllers, we would have a lot more animal disease, more crop disease and a lot of human disease, all of which would need to be controlled through chemical interventions. So bats actually perform a really important ecosystem service,” Ms Hayns said.
The committee blamed slow house-building on “a lack of cross-government policy alignment and co-ordination, fragmented data systems and a dearth of ecological, planning and construction skills”.
Research by the RSPB found the public overwhelmingly does not want nature sacrificed for short-term growth.
The Wildlife Trusts say exempting small developments from biodiversity net gain rules would inhibit the green economy and allow developers to avoid compensation obligations worth £250m a year.
Government shifts on nature protections risks torpedo-ing business confidence in private investment in nature recovery, the trusts say.
Ms Speight said: “We know that we've lost, for example, 38 million birds in the last 50 years. Nature's in a really bad state, and this government promised to be the most nature-positive government this nation has ever seen. And we then get all the kind of anti-nature rhetoric we've had over the past kind of six months.”
A government spokesperson said: “We inherited a failing system that has held up the construction of vital homes and infrastructure, blocking growth and doing nothing for nature’s recovery.
“Our Planning and Infrastructure Bill creates a win-win for the economy and nature - delivering better outcomes for the environment and helping us build 1.5 million homes to restore the dream of homeownership.”
Earlier this month, the government whipped its MPs to vote against bricks with holes in for swifts, despite having in opposition promised to back the move.
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