OEP Chair Dame Glenys Stacey gave a speech at Westminster Forum's 'Next steps for environmental protection and the planning system in England' event on Thursday 20 November. Her speech was titled 'Progress on environmental targets and priorities for environmental safeguards moving forward'.
Good afternoon, and thank you for inviting me to speak today, and as I am speaking towards the end of the event, I get to take a step back and reflect on what we have heard, and think again about the big picture.
When I think about what is needed to make progress on environmental targets and what the priorities are for environmental safeguards, I can sum it up in three words: implementation; coherence; and urgency.
Implementation
Those who have heard me talk before will not be surprised to hear me talk about the need for effective implementation. A recurring theme for the OEP across much of our work is finding environmental law not delivering the intended outcomes because of issues around how and indeed whether it is being put into practice on the ground, or in the water, for that matter.
It is much on our mind with the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. Those paying attention will know that we had some significant concerns around the first iteration of the Bill. Government then made amendments that went a long way to addressing the issues we raised and increasing the prospect, in our view, of government being able to achieve its ‘win win’ outcomes for development and nature.
The Bill is now progressing and we await the final outcome.
We are watching, of course we are. But for us, the real game now is what happens when the new approach is agreed and has to be implemented. What will determine the extent to which it achieves those joint aims is how well the legislation has been designed with the ‘real world’ in mind, and how it is actually put into practice.
It looks like no easy task. Policy and delivery responsibilities and finance streams across different government departments and local government add challenges. Putting in place a new approach which needs action and buy-in across a diverse range of players is always daunting. The communications, user-interface and data issues will be considerable.
When, a few years ago now, we assessed the three main environmental assessment regimes for planning - Environmental Impact Assessments; Strategic Environmental Assessments; and Habitats Regulations Assessments - we identified three deep seated problems.
These were: access to information; the extent of post-decision monitoring, evaluation and reporting; and access to expertise – as Neil Beamsley (Bellway Homes) and others mentioned earlier. These issues were well recognised, long standing and not susceptible to easy, or indeed legislative, fixes.
To bring us right up to date, we will shortly be publishing our report on implementation of regulations around protected sites in England. As Richard Benwell signalled, they are the most important places for nature, and for certain species, but only 35% are in favourable condition, and the network is relatively small and poorly connected.
Again, we have identified issues with implementation. We will make a number of recommendations for Defra and Natural England, whilst also recognising that the achievement of positive environmental outcomes relies upon the actions of many private landowners and occupiers. The recommendations are across six themes: governance; resources; site designation; monitoring, evaluation and reporting; land management incentives and advice; and regulatory tools and enforcement.
The report will be out early next month, please do take a look.
So, as the Planning and Infrastructure Bill progresses, we are working up how we will monitor how the new approach that comes in is actually delivered, and the role we can play in supporting success.
I want to talk here as well about water sector reform. We know that getting regulation of the water environment right is key to unlocking development and supporting growth, not to mention any other benefits for nature’s recovery and human well-being.
Progress has been made. We saw that with our investigation into the regulation of combined sewer overflows. We found that the Secretary of State, the Environment Agency and Ofwat had failed to comply with environmental law. We issued decision notices setting out what needed to be done to achieve compliance. We saw significant progress in delivering those actions, to better the implementation of environmental law, so that we were able to end the investigation. We will be publishing our detailed investigation reports next month – some light festive reading for you there.
But we also know, following the government’s response to the independent commission on water (the Cunliffe review) that significant change is coming.
We must not lose sight of the lessons we have already learned.
Our assessment of the implementation of the Water Framework Directive regulations found that the widely anticipated failure to meet the forthcoming 2027 targets is, at least in significant part, the result of a failure to identify and apply specific actions for individual waterbodies, rather than a failure in the design of the regulations themselves. A view later backed up by the court judgement in the Pickering case. And while government has said it will comply with this judgement, it has not yet made it clear how it will do so.
So, ineffective implementation of environmental law is the consistent theme.
Much of what I have spoken about here chimes with the Corry review, which found the current system for environmental regulation to be outdated, inconsistent, highly complex and not delivering enough for nature or growth. It called for more focus on outcomes, including greater alignment between the regulatory approach and government’s more ambitious targets, particularly those in the current EIP. It also made recommendations around retention of expert staff within regulators and recovery of costs.
Effective regulation – well designed and well implemented - can ensure outcomes are delivered. It can support nature’s recovery and economic growth.
In these times of change I do urge government and decision-makers not to forget the basics. When you can’t get where you need to go because the road is too bumpy and full of pot holes, you don’t fix the problem by buying a new car. You have to make sure the road is in a fit state.
Coherence
The next priority is coherence. From the topics covered here today it’s clear that efforts are being made to set new direction and provide clarity on a number of fronts.
Work is on-going on the Land Use Framework. In commenting on the consultation, we found much to commend in the proposed framework. We welcomed the prospect of a more coherent approach to land use policy and spatial prioritisation, and the intelligent principles for decision making.
The consultation rightly focused on balancing land use objectives for the environment, climate and food production, and was clear about the significant scale and pace of land use change needed to deliver targets for nature recovery and climate change. But farmland covers two-thirds of England’s land, representing the greatest opportunity to make space for nature, yet it falls outside of current spatial planning frameworks.
I will remind us here that one of our key recommendations to government for how to get on track to meet environmental targets is to get nature friendly farming right.
The LUF must become an integral and influential framework to bring much needed coherence to land use policy.
We await the final version, due next year now.
We also have the National Planning Policy Framework, updated earlier this year and which I note makes the link with the Local Nature Recovery Strategies. We have looked at these in detail, and in doing so noted that the NPPF needs strengthening further to better account for the role that they can play in planning. Indeed, when we looked at the LNRS, we specifically looked at their ambition, coherence and delivery focus. The local strategies we looked at made references to a plethora of other relevant plans and strategies, but it was not clear how they had informed them, nor was it clear how they might work together – or in tension – to assist local decision making.
We also have the aforementioned Planning and Infrastructure Bill and water reforms, as well as a consultation on possible changes to the approach to Biodiversity Net Gain.
I ask an open question here – is it well understood how all of these important and useful developments relate to each other? How they interact, where the overlaps and priorities lie? How they contribute to intended wider outcomes?
And the bigger questions for us at the OEP is, of course: What role do they play in helping government achieve its statutory environmental targets and commitments? How do they sit with the Environmental Improvement Plan?
The EIP is the driver to achieve government’s main ambitions and obligations, all efforts should cohere around and be pointed at those targets, with clarity around how they contribute.
And, lastly on coherence, a mention here for the Environmental Principles Policy Statement – what a powerful tool that can be to ensure government can achieve coherence at policy level by considering the environment at an early stage – which can head off issues and conflict later on.
Navigating the roads would be extremely frustrating if none of them ever actually joined up or took you to where you thought you were going. Or if we all had maps that looked different.
Urgency
Mention of the EIP takes me to the next priority. Urgency.
Many of the important things I have spoken of today are delayed or are being worked on for implementation in the future.
Government has been reviewing the EIP for some time now. We appreciate the importance of getting it right, and the dedication and expertise that will be going into that work.
But back in January we said government remained off track to meet many of its key environmental targets and commitments, and that the window of opportunity to change that trajectory was closing fast.
Nature is in crisis now.
Urgent action is needed now.
The EIP is critical. It is the route-map for government – all of government – to set out the actions and progress needed to better protect and improve the environment.
That revised plan must come out as soon as possible. It must show realistic and determined plans that stack up to actual delivery to make achieving these imperative targets and commitments a reality. And it must be effectively communicated to all those with a role to play, so they can get on with it.
In the meantime, government has recently responded to our last EIP progress report. We made 44 recommendations, and note that these have largely been accepted, and that government says they have fed into the revised EIP.
We all need to see the detail.
Going back to the water reforms now. The scale of the changes to the regulatory system being set out are huge. Delivering that change is an immense task and will take a lot of time and a lot of resource.
But urgent action is needed now to protect and improve our water bodies. Activity can’t be paused until all of that is sorted.
We are currently investigating whether there have been failures to comply with environmental law relating to the implementation of the previously mentioned WFD regulations. Much of the concern relates to that lack of plans for specific sites. We don’t yet have sight of specific action aimed at achieving the binding targets Defra and the EA have set in the RBMPs. It is clear, I think, that those plans are needed if the water environment is to be better protected and improved, understanding that the framework around that may well change in future.
There is a problem today that needs better than a possible solution tomorrow.
If you are driving to get to a certain place by a certain time, you do have to plan ahead, avoid roadworks and roadblocks – and you do have to put your foot down. (That’s the last of the car analogy now, I promise).
Conclusion
We know that government is committed to nature’s recovery, alongside other legitimate priorities, most notably economic growth. And it is fact that there are statutory environmental targets and commitments getting ever closer.
We also know that it is possible to achieve the ‘win win’ outcomes, for nature and for growth. Indeed, for the economy and society to thrive, so must nature.
Environmental regulation – well designed, well implemented – is key to that.
So, government must prioritise:
Effective implementation – get it right on the ground to make sure environmental regulations deliver the intended outcomes.
Coherence – make sure all the different elements work together and understand how they contribute to meeting environmental targets and obligations.
Urgency – Get on with what needs to be done, and don’t become so focused on the future that you don’t do what needs doing now.
In other words – do it properly, do it in a way that puts the different bits together well, and do it now.
I would like here to welcome the inquiry report recently published by the Environmental Audit Committee on environmental sustainability and housing growth, mentioned by others here this morning. Much in that report chimes with what I have said here today, particularly where it identifies several key obstacles to the government as it strives to achieve the win win outcomes: a lack of cross-government policy alignment and co-ordination; fragmented data systems, a dearth of ecological, planning and construction skills. So, coherence and effective implementation.
Finally, I will add a fourth priority. Not just for government, but for us all. We must do better in telling the story of nature’s importance to all other aims and priorities.
It seems inexplicably difficult to set out the crucial way in which the natural environment underpins all other aspects of society in a way that works, and I was delighted to hear Martin Brammah earlier say that language is key. For the debate over competing priorities to be appropriately balanced, the importance of the environment to our economy, health and national security needs to be well understood, to be tangible to people.
I will leave you with that challenge.
Thank you.
