Welcome, everybody, to the late meeting of the Environmental Audit Committee as part of our review into house building and planning and the planning framework. We are delighted to be joined by our first panel. I will ask the panel to introduce themselves and their organisations and then we will get into the question. If we can start with you, Ms Postlethwaite, please.

I am Sarah Postlethwaite, a planning ecologist at North Northamptonshire Council. I have worked as a local authority ecologist for 22 years. I am co-author of the Wild Justice report “Lost Nature”, which looks at planning enforcement issues, and I sit on the planning for nature advisory board.

Dr Iain Boulton. I work for the London Borough of Lambeth, but I am here as the Vice Chair of the Association of Local Government Ecologists. We represent over 160 local planning authorities across the four countries. I have been Vice Chair for about 15 years and in local government for 24 years.

John Martin from the University of Plymouth. I am a researcher looking at landscape assessment and monitoring. I am Co-Chair of the South Devon AONB or national landscapes as they are called now. I am a member of the Taymar Valley National Landscape on redevelopment projects, looking at redeveloping rural regeneration.

Thank you very much. Ms Postlethwaite, I will start with you. How do you perceive the relationship between the Government’s house building target and the requirement for local nature recovery strategies to be established?

I will have to pass on this one because I have no experience of LNRSs, I am afraid.

I am involved with the Greater London local nature recovery strategy, which covers all of the boroughs of Greater London. As you might appreciate, in Greater London the pressures on housing provision are enormous, phenomenal, but I think it is because we are fortunate to have an integration with the Mayor of London’s strategy on housing and environment—they are quite closely connected and linked—that we appreciate the need for housing to be built. It is about making sure that nature recovery is integrated into the housing provision rather than being dropped on it. There are some amazing sites across London for nature and nature recovery, but it is also about making sure that people are fitted around nature recovery and vice versa. It is making sure that the organisations driving forward housing development are also talking very closely to those responsible for nature recovery and nature conservation. I am speaking obviously from a London-centric view, but I know from some of our members that they have the same position.

I wonder if you hit the heart of one of the big questions here. Do people fit around nature recovery or does nature recovery fit around people? Would you care to comment about whether the Government’s approach changes the balance of whether people are fitting around nature or nature is fitting around people?

I speak for a local authority where housing needs are unbelievably massive. The main thing is that you don’t forget nature. Politically it is quite important to build houses and houses for the right purposes, but people also need to have access to nature for the quality of their lives, their mental and physical wellbeing. I think it is about making sure that, top down, Government need to be setting policy and strategy that local planning authorities can follow with a balance being taken very carefully all the way through, down to the bottom level. Government’s role should be to make sure that that direction is clear and provides for that balance.

Thank you. Dr Martin, how do you perceive the relationship between the house building target, which has changed the areas that in many ways across the country will be expected to increase their numbers, and the requirement for the local nature recovery strategies?

It is the key element of having the right development in the right place and working closely with the environmental issues so that it is truly a sustainable development, understanding the consequences of that development, making sure the infrastructure is in place. When you think about the waste water infrastructure, especially in the south-west, increasing the number of houses will only put more pressure on that infrastructure, which will then lead to polluting rivers and the sea. It is essential to have that connection and to think about whether it is sustainable. It is the link with people and place, having a sense of place and making sure that developments are in the correct place and meeting the needs of the communities. It is also connecting with protected landscapes. There is a huge number of protected landscapes in Devon and Cornwall, so developments off those landscapes have consequences for the landscapes themselves. It is important to think about that. I think the protected landscapes as a family are not blocking development. They want to work closely with these plans and with local authorities to aid development in the right place. That is a key relationship between the two.

When you say, “in the right place”, previous house building growth has largely centred around London and the south-east and other specific areas. This Government’s approach seems to be much more about growth in areas that have not seen that. When you talk about the right areas, is this more complicated than just urban versus rural? Do you see that this Government’s approach is different to the one that has been taken before for what the right areas might be?

It is not black and white between urban versus rural. There are shades of grey there in how that might work. It is the affordability of those houses. If you take Cornwall again and the gentrification of some of the areas where houses have been built, those communities are gone with no one living in those particular areas, so there are no facilities, schools and those types of things. There are whole consequences of where development takes place, and the type of development is super important.

Dr Boulton, do you think the changes that recent Ministers have made to the National Planning Policy Framework are more likely to enhance or to obstruct the creation, implementation and maintenance of local nature recovery schemes?

I am not fully conversant with the NPPF as it has been changing but I think there are potential risks that could make it more difficult if there are additional layers being asked of local planning authorities to develop nature recovery and they are in conflict with the need for housing. Right through the NPPF there is the need to recognise that nature around people is critical for the quality of their lives, but the need for housing needs to be sensitive to nature, including integrating nature into the development itself. We always think about nature around a development but there are many good examples right across the UK where a development has integrated nature into itself, and it has worked really well. Also, the management of that nature is of a high standard because people are standing on top of it, and they can manage it.

Ms Postlethwaite, from a North Northamptonshire perspective, do you believe that the changes coming from Government will make your local nature recovery schemes easier or more difficult?

I cannot really comment because, as I say, I am not involved. I have only been at North Northamptonshire since November, but I would guess, due to the increase in housing allocations, it will make it more difficult.

Thank you very much. Dr Boulton, how well do you think stakeholders such as planners, developers and ecologists are working together to create and implement local nature recovery strategies?

It is highly variable across local planning authorities. I think that part of the problem is that many local authorities have a good cohort of planners but often do not have a permanent ecologist working for the authority. Don’t get me wrong: some local authorities form a combined authority where they share ecological knowledge. Greater Manchester is a good example. A district council may struggle to have an ecologist on their books and may have to work with the county council or unitary authority for that provision. Planning officers tend to be better spread across local planning authorities because these are statutory obligations for the council, and I think they have recognised that. Speak for myself, I think in London there is a good relationship between planning officers and ecologists because London is well provided with ecologists, but it is highly variable in other parts of the countries. The recent reductions in spending and the recent challenges for council, in providing for homelessness and people in need of housing, has meant that ecologists do not come very high in the ranks for recruiting new staff.

When you say “recent”, are you talking about the last few years, the last few months?

It is going back for 14 years. It has been through ups and downs because suddenly something comes along that pressurises the need for ecologists, but then of course when the slack comes in, it can be very hard to recruit new people. After covid, a lot of people retired as ecologists, and they have not been recruited in some local authorities.

When you say “recent”, you mean that as we have seen local government funds cut over the last decade and a half, it has had an impact on this. Do you get any sense that the Government recognise that if they build the housing that they are going to build and do it in a way that continues to protect the environment, there will be a need to make sure there are more ecologists recruited by local authorities? We have heard this a lot. Do you get a sense that Government have thought that through?

I get the sense from some of our members, who talk to their own Members of Parliament, that MPs recognise that because constituents are asking MPs. Constituents are concerned about the risk of development harming nature and green space. Local authorities recognise that there is a need for ecologists, and it is then recruiting the cohort. Organisations like CIEEM, who are represented here today, and other organisations are doing an awful lot to advocate for more ecologists as well. It is not just ALGE; it is across the board we are advocating for ecologists.

Have you seen any particularly effective approaches to the development of local nature recovery strategies?

I will speak for the big urban conurbations, because those are the ones I know. I am thinking of Manchester, Bristol, Greater Manchester and London where because they have the spread across local authorities and a spectrum of officers, there has been some very successful working of the local nature recovery strategy from scratch and making sure all the right stakeholders are involved—not just local authorities, but private landowners as well.

Ms Postlethwaite, give us a perspective from a non-city area. How large is the population of North Northamptonshire? Can you reflect on how that is for you?

I don’t know how many people live in the area. It comprises four districts, so there are four former urban centres, but I cannot give you a figure for the population, I am afraid.

Does your authority feel that you have the sort of ecology support that you need?

No. It is in a better situation now than it has been for quite a while, but literally it has two agency staff as ecologists and a county council ecologist and that is it.

There are many people in the political scene who spent a lot of time in North Northamptonshire when there was a recent by-election there so we might know it rather better than we do most areas. Thank you.

Welcome, panel. What are the main indicators for the effectiveness of the local nature recovery strategy? I will come to Dr Martin first.

One of the key issues, which may be back to the other question, is the sets of data and having consistent data. That is linked to not having enough ecologists but also to data not necessarily being up to date or shared and having top-down and bottom-up data. Developers will produce data that may not always be shared across. There are also a lot of really good local science projects going on collecting data on some of these issues but there is no mechanism for that to find its way back to a dataset. An observatory where data from bottom up and top down is collected and is available via a national platform and consistently up to date, and can be used at no cost, would be a major step forward.

One of the great tools for making LNRSs work effectively and collecting data is our local record centres. Across the UK often counties at one time had record centres that collated data on ecology, open spaces, trees included, and were able to share that with local planning authorities and stakeholders in the community as well to ensure there was a good dataset to allow them to make decisions. Local record centres, like local authorities, went through changes and pressures because often local record centres are funded through local government. If money is tight, it is hard to finance the local record centres, and they may struggle to have the staffing to service the needs of data and intelligence information. I think that record centres are critical, and we are very lucky that across the UK we have a very good cohort of record centres but they, like local planning authorities, struggle to have the resources to make sure they can serve their customers’ needs.

Sarah Postlethwaite, do you have anything to add about effective indicators?

No.

No. Thank you so much. We have heard about the challenges for good record centres and the funding for that. Are there any further challenges that you would like to highlight to the Committee that may prevent a local nature recovery scheme from being effective?

I think it is also to recognise the fact that not all land is in public ownership. A lot of land is in private ownership, or it is owned by commercial enterprises, including utilities providers. LNRSs work if all the right stakeholders are involved from the very beginning and that includes private landowners. I am not saying that you will suddenly build a new woodland on somebody’s private land in their back garden, but it is about saying that if you own land and you are a private entity, you are involved and informed and then you may offer land available for nature recovery. We were discussing about water companies before we came in. They often have huge land holdings that are prime for nature recovery, and you would think in the current climate the water companies would be looking for opportunities to look good in the public eye. It is also about non-government bodies who have land and making sure that they are part of the process. I think that is a success story. It is not all about public bodies, it is about everybody because nature recovery is for everybody. A lot of land is in private ownership in the countryside, and it is making sure that private landowners are informed and involved from the very start. That is often where Members of Parliament play a key role because you can advocate that when you are talking to your constituents.

The protected landscapes that you find in those areas can play a key role in bringing the stakeholders together and often very good relationships exist already. There is an issue of funding, as you are probably aware, with national parks and national landscapes but they can play a role in bringing almost matrix management.

Before the next question, I will give the example of Greenham Common in West Berkshire. It used to be the old airfield. If you go to Greenham Common now, it is one of the most impressive green spaces of biodiversity and nature. Nature has recovered on a site that was also potentially very controversial but is now seen as a flagship for nature recovery.

That is very helpful. It is always good to hear examples and success stories. How sufficient is current Government guidance for measuring effectiveness?

I think it could be better focused. It could be more concise. It could be clearer. It is not helped by the constant changes of guidance and new policy coming through all the time. A review of all the guidance about data collection and data management would be very helpful.

That is very interesting. Is there a specific example you would like to highlight of one of the areas that could be clearer?

I think it is about the fact that there are certain critical datasets—for instance about ancient woodland inventories, our tree inventories. There has been a lot of different guidance about how you measure the quality and the value of our woodlands, particularly our older woodlands. Refining some of the guidance would help as well because I think we all appreciate woodlands and value it very highly for what it contributes to our society, but it is about how you evaluate it, measure it, quantify it. A lot of people are out in the field doing an immense amount of work, but it is about making it a bit easier to understand, and that is citizens as well.

Other initiatives that run alongside often cause confusion with people trying to do more than one thing and the indicators are not necessarily there. They do a piece of work for a couple of years, then the funding stops, and they go on to something else, so you never have a complete dataset for some of these things. Consistent longitudinal data also needs to be captured to show the effectiveness.

You have looked ahead to my next question. We have heard a lot about data gaps hindering some of the development and functioning of these strategies, which you have found have been an issue. Are there specific types of data that are not available? Do you see any prospects for seeing that data improve that you would like to highlight for us?

It varies on a particular topic or issue, but one of the things that has come out recently—it has been in the news, of course—is the sudden decline of invertebrates and pollinators across the UK. We now realise that we are losing an entire cohort of experts on surveying for invertebrates. Those people who collected all the records of the era of Charles Darwin are not there anymore and are retired or have passed away and there is no cohort recruitment of those experts to survey. We know that the populations of our invertebrates and pollinators are struggling and yet they are so critical for making nature recovery work.

Does anyone else on the panel have anything to add on that point?

I think it is just identifying the key set of data that you want to use and making sure it is consistent and is being collected. That is the vital point.

Finally, how sufficient are the current funding, resource and capacity mechanisms for supporting the development and implementation of these schemes?

It varies across the country, but we are very fortunate that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has been very supportive of biodiversity net gain. It has given us some starter funds that have been very well appreciated by local planning authorities. For local nature recovery strategies, it is down to the partners of the LRNS to find the resources because local planning authorities may often struggle to find the money themselves unless they can pool their resources to make it more effective. That is why I go back to private landowners and other organisations contributing to an LRNS that works effectively.

I have nothing more to add.

I have some questions on biodiversity net gain. My opening question, starting with Ms Postlethwaite, is: how easy or difficult are biodiversity net gain schemes to implement and manage?

A biodiversity net gain scheme starts literally at project concept and finishes in 30 years at post-development completion. From a local authority point of view, we see it at the moment because it is only a year into the process while we are reviewing the application. No BNG developments have been built out yet that require monitoring, so I can only give my experience of what I have seen in the planning system so far. That is generally that you have a large proportion of smaller residential schemes using the self-build loophole to claim exemption from BNG. I am not sure in most cases how strictly this is being enforced because I have seen applications from medium-sized developers claiming that it is self-build, but it is not my job to comment on that. The other thing I am seeing is problems caused in the guidance and legislation with a lot of grey areas. We need a lot more clarification on things such as the issue of what is significant. Significant BNGs will have to be secured for 30 years; the rest can be left to planning provision and does not have to be monitored. But really what is significant is a hugely contentious issue at the moment because it can have potentially quite big cost implications for developers. There is the quality of landscape schemes as well. This is because they are basically trying to propose quite complex habitat creation onsite because it is cheaper to provide it onsite than go offsite. There are issues with the quality of the work. In the information submitted, the baseline is often incorrect.

Thank you very much. Dr Boulton, do you have anything to add?

I reiterate what Sarah said, but don’t get me wrong, we have seen some BNG plans come through recently that have been done really well by some developers and their agents because they have thought from square one how to do it properly and to avoid some of the pitfalls that Sarah has mentioned. It is about ensuring that developers are also receiving good guidance and good advice, because a lot of the guidance about BNG is coming to local planning authorities. It is also making sure that developers and their land managers are getting good quality guidance about what local planning authorities are expecting to see and how to make sure BNG works for them so that we don’t end up with these problems.

Dr Martin, anything to add?

No.

Some developers are choosing to fulfil their biodiversity net gain obligations by funding offsite. How confident are you that arrangements for monitoring and regulation at offsite locations are robust, reflecting it is early days?

Offsite or onsite?

Offsite.

I cannot really comment on that.

If you want to comment on onsite, that would also be helpful.

Local authorities only get involved in monitoring onsite net gain or, if they are a responsible body, monitoring what has been provided by habitat banks essentially. Again, we are not really at the stage of monitoring any developments so all I can say is we can get an indication of what is likely to happen. This is from basically the work that we did for the Wild Justice report “Lost Nature” last year, looking at developments that have already been built and how compliant they were with the habitats that they should have been provided onsite. Overall, they failed to provide 47% of the habitats that they should have and when it came to grassland, which is a commonly proposed ecological enhancement to get net gain onsite, it failed for 59%. Unless we can get secure moneys for monitoring, this is what we are likely to see. The problem is that for smaller sites, which are not getting section 106 to secure monitoring moneys, which is a burden that falls to the LPA for 30 years. That is one issue. The other issue is enforcement because enforcement teams are already generally quite under-resourced, so that is why this is happening. It is not being monitored but also they are quite powerless to take any action enforcement-wise. For example, North Northamptonshire, four former districts, has one enforcement officer. Another issue is unfeasible habitat creation proposals because they are trying to squash stuff in onsite, which makes these schemes less likely to succeed. That will lead to problems with enforcement because no amount of enforcement will get certain habitats to happen if the conditions are not right, essentially. That will be a bit of a headache. Also, the enforcement process can be dragged out for quite a long time. For example, on developments management of these habitats is subcontracted to third parties—sorry, I cannot think of the actual term—who can easily go bust and just start up again if enforcement action was taken against them.

Do you have anything further to add?

No. I am in total agreement with that.

Are there any risks to the scheme’s effectiveness in delivering nature recovery? Perhaps this is where Dr Boulton and Dr Martin may have some observations.

There is a risk. It goes back to what I said earlier about thinking about what you propose at the beginning, to make sure that you read what the local nature recovery strategy is for the area that your development is in and cross-match it and say, “If I do this scheme, what elements will actually recover nature? Will it contribute to an LRNS or not?” There is more chance, if you are thinking about LRNS and you have that right, that monitoring enforcement might be easier in the long term because you are setting a bigger picture. That is where possibly the enforcement monitoring might be more effective because someone will come and check on the schemes because they are part of a LRNS programme.

Anything further, Dr Martin? No. My final question is: do you have any concerns about the monitoring and regulation of the biodiversity credit market?

It is something that I am very new to, but I think it is not clear exactly how it will work in practice. It would be good to have some case examples showing how the process will follow, where the pitfalls are, where local planning authorities might intervene or might not have the powers to intervene. It is early doors yet.

Can I add something? We need consistent monitoring protocols essentially for this that can be applied across the board. The problem is the habitat classification system that is used for biodiversity net gain called UKHab is a very subjective method compared to the previous classification system, which was like the gold standard, called NVC, National Vegetation Classification. The fact that it is more subjective can leave it more open to abuse, so that is why we need some really consistent monitoring capability.

If we were looking for recommendations, would that be a key recommendation for you?

Yes.

To build on that recommendation, what is your recommendation, given you are saying that basically, as I understand it, nobody is responsible for monitoring offsite at the moment? It is to understand that point. Also, for it come at the beginning, would there be a recommendation about strengthening the duty on local government for the local nature recovery strategy? At the moment it is just to take account. Should they have material weight? What are your recommendations to the Committee on those two?

I think it would be nice to have material weight. It would be nice to have that kind of increased involvement but that requires resourcing as well. That would need someone to do it and that is a challenge for local planning authorities.

On the offsite?

Offsite is monitored by a combination of the companies themselves that set up habitat banks or through a responsible body if they are smaller habitat banks.

You have no further recommendations on that?

It is not really my area of knowledge.

On the same point, I was quite appalled to hear how low the percentage is of housebuilders that are delivering these sites. It was a quite shocking statistic. You talked a lot about enforcement. What is the penalty if housebuilders don’t deliver these sites?

I cannot tell you because it is not clear at the moment what the enforcement will be. I have not had any examples in my local planning authority of any enforcement having to be done. Again, it is tricky to get enforcement on a wide range of planning infringements. I am not familiar with what the penalties will be.

I don’t know either, I am afraid.

Do you think that penalties should be quite clear? Do you think that would help in order to—

They need to be clear, and they need to be quite severe financially, because if there is no consequence—which is effectively the situation at the moment—then why do it?

Do you think that would help compliance?

Yes, it would. It may not be financial; it could be just the physical rectification of what you have not done.

But having to pay for that, yes.

Yes, exactly.

The penalty then pays for the resourcing that you are saying is missing. That is quite a useful recommendation for us.

Yes, it would be for us as well.

First question to Ms Postlethwaite if that is okay. Are biodiversity net gain requirements making any difference to the way that housing developments are being planned and delivered than previously?

As a local authority ecologist, it is a bit difficult to say because I am not involved in the planning or the delivery. Obviously, I have seen landscape schemes change to generally become more complex, sometimes completely wildly ambitious and ridiculous. In terms of delivery, again too early to comment.

Yes, I would agree with that one. We have seen some biodiversity net gain proposals come through from local planning authority departments, which are housing departments. Some of them have been very good, because again they are talking directly to their local planning ecologists and their planning officers. They are beginning to understand what they have to do onsite that delivers quality but is not too complicated.

Could you share with us the examples of local authorities where you have seen that?

I can probably find you some examples. We can ask ALGE to provide examples to Committee members.

Thank you, that would be very kind. The changes that have been brought in to introduce biodiversity net gain requirements, are they having an overall impact on the aim of nature recovery?

I think BNG is not the be all and end all of nature recovery. Biodiversity net gain is a great tool, but I think there is more to it than that. I think nature recovery involves more than just biodiversity net gain; it also involves a wider range of projects. Some developments are not eligible, do not have to provide BNG, but they can still think about nature recovery as part of their planning application and then they can integrate it. I have seen some small-scale developments come through that have not required BNG that have put in features that will provide towards nature recovery in part of a borough, which is highly commendable and needed.

Back to you, Dr Boulton, if that is okay. Previously we had a witness note that biodiversity net gain means that ecologists are now being consulted on developing designs much earlier in the process. Is this the experience across ecologists working in the field, do you think, at the moment or do you think there is still a long way to go?

There is still a long way to go, but talking to members before today, there is evidence that they are being involved much earlier, but it is variable and it depends on that relationship with the planning officers, because planning officers might not realise when to trigger that response from an ecologist. It is just making sure they understand when that trigger point arrives.

Under biodiversity net gain, developers need to provide at least 10% of improvements, but previous oral evidence that we have on this suggested that local authorities were struggling to justify asking for more than that. Is the evidence of local authorities asking for more than 10% in gains available? Do you know whether anyone has been asking for more and has been successful or not?

Yes, I think a number of local planning authorities have gone for more 10%. I can find the figures for you, but I think there have been a lot of pushbacks. They get a lot of pushbacks to go for more than 10% because to justify more than 10%, the process of justifying that becomes more complicated and there are more grounds for challenge from a wider range of stakeholders.

Are there any examples where developers have agreed with more than 10% that you are aware of?

I cannot think of any examples myself, but I can do some research for the Committee.

Brilliant, thank you. That would be very kind. Any other comments on those points? No, okay.

I am not an expert on nutrient neutrality, so I will have to go back and ask ALGE members if they can provide some information on that one.

It is not something I could comment on, sorry.

But I am sure some of our members would like to comment on that one, so I can get that information.

Yes.

Yes.

Pleasure.

We are aware that one in four local planning authorities do not have any access to ecological expertise. Ms Postlethwaite to start with: what do you think needs to change to improve the implementation and enforcement of environmental policies alongside the rapid delivery of 1.5 million new homes?

Sorry, can you just ask that again? I am not entirely sure where this fits with my notes.

Yes. Essentially what I am asking: in quite a broad sense we have talked already today about the lack of ecological expertise within local authorities. I am asking what more you think needs to be done to improve the implementation and enforcement of environmental policies at the local authority level.

Gosh, that is a long one. Better resourcing is number one, because there are problems on multiple fronts with this. There are too few ecologists and also there are too few ecologists with the right level of knowledge and experience, so you end up with some LPAs relying on advice from say wildlife trusts or agency staff and that can be highly variable. In some cases, I have heard of, they have not been ecologists or had any experience with ecology, yet they are providing ecology advice on applications, so there is that. Again, there is the lack of enforcement officers. Again, that means that ecology issues tend to take a bit of a backseat. Also, the enforcement officers do not have the knowledge to assess ecological features, such as has the right type of grass been planted, things like that. There is also little resource in many local authorities for biodiversity duty reporting, which will be a real issue for BNG.

That is excellent. Did someone else want to come in there for a minute?

The same things, I would agree with that one. Also, you said there are local planning authorities without ecologists, but often they can work with other authorities who have ecological experience. Of course, we have talked about these combined authorities and shared services. Greater Manchester does it; Merseyside does it as well. It is about them having the realisation that they need that advice and support, and they need to work out mechanisms to access that support. Greater Manchester, as an example, has a wealth of knowledgeable ecologists working for the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. It is making sure those authorities are tapping into that knowledge. It doesn’t require a lot of resources to pay for that service. That should be advocated.

Not local authorities, but I would just add that National Landscapes can play a role again, as I said. The Levelling Up and Regeneration Act—I think the second bit is being redrafted now—is furthering the purposes of those protecting landscapes. They can support this role and have that across because they sit within local authorities.

That is where combined authorities’ mayors and regional mayors can play a key role. I think if they understand what ecology means to their constituents and to the area, they can play a very important role in advocating for that.

It might be very interesting to get some further written evidence from you on how you think this links into devolution and local government reorganisation.

Yes, will do.

Ms Postlethwaite, picking up on some of the points that you made, you talked about a lack of the right level of knowledge and expertise. Are there particular fields within ecology that are lacking?

Certainly BNG has shown that there is a real lack of botanical skills in the sector.

That would be an area that you think the Government would need to look at for training?

Absolutely, yes.

Yes.

You spoke about lack of knowledge from enforcement officers, so there is a training issue there as well?

Yes.

Brilliant, thank you. What more could the Government do, following on from that, to improve the recruitment and retention of ecologists and environmental experts in local government?

The biggest issue is pay, especially in local authorities, because I think realistic wages for where we are now are being hampered by the job evaluation process and also the grading structure that you get in councils. For example, I have just seen this week an advert for a BNG ecologist in south and east Lincolnshire. They are asking for an understanding of both the legislative and policy framework as well as the ecological assessment methods—which is UKHabs—required to implement BNG. The salary range is £26,000 to £29,000 a year. Minimum wage is about £23,500. You are not going to get someone. That is quite a high level of knowledge and experience that you are asking for. You are not going to get the person with the requisite skills on that salary and that is the issue. That is number one. Second, you have very high workloads. That leads to mental health problems and stress, burnout is quite common, and a lot of ecologists have left the sector for that reason.

Presumably that in itself is part of the resourcing problem, that there are not enough people to share the workload.

Yes, absolutely. In consultancy particularly you have a bad work-life balance over the summer, when you are doing most of your survey work, which is less of an issue in local authorities. For both, you have a lack of accommodations for neurodiverse staff. I think this is better in local authorities because they have a bit more flexibility about home working and other things that they can do. I think this is a big issue in retention because ecology, as a profession, seems to attract a higher proportion of neurodiverse people than many other industries, and not catering to them means they are losing a lot of potentially good people. Also, the lack of resource in-house in local authorities to train up new ecologists is preventing us taking on graduates and training them up because we just don’t have the time to do it, essentially.

Thank you very much. Again, it might be useful to have some further written detail on some of those points. I am sure we could talk about it for a long time. Does anyone else on the panel want to comment?

Yes. I will support that one, because I work for a London local authority where we have 350,000-plus residents and I am the only ecologist. You can imagine the pressures our local authority is under, including in terms of development for housing. I am having to carry a huge caseload, but also I don’t have anybody that I can transfer those skills to. It is something I would love to do. I think if the Government can look at the way in which we are funding apprenticeships—mentoring schemes as well—for people coming out of university, thinking of a university career, to think of this as a career that has enormous traction and benefit for them. That would be something I think we would all support.

Brilliant. My final question: would anyone on the panel like to comment on whether the recent changes to the NPPF may make it less likely that environmental policies will be adequately implemented and enforced at the local authority level?

This is very important. I think they will have a huge impact because in the absence of updated local plans and in the context of increased housing targets, most development that will come forward will be on unallocated sites. These tend to be the sites that are better for nature generally, so this is potentially a huge issue. There needs to be better strategic planning that identifies the sites that are least harmful to nature. We also need to do something to strengthen brownfield protection because although we appreciate that many are in great locations for redevelopment, and that is fine, but a lot of those sites are also very ecologically valuable, like former quarries and industrial sites. Moving to automatic approvals for brownfield sites could cause some serious issues, I think. Last, the rise in applications that this will lead to, it just compounds the whole workload and capacity issue that we have already mentioned.

I agree with that one as well. Also to bear in mind—going back to what I said earlier about sites—there are examples of brownfield sites or previous military sites that have been converted partially into housing, very good housing, and yet part of the sites has been retained for nature conservation. One example that comes to me is Waltham Abbey, which of course was originally a gunpowder works, yet part of it is provided for housing and the rest of it is an amazing heritage feature, but also it is probably one of the richest wildlife sites in north-east London.

In terms of the selection of sites, it is understanding the sensitivity and capacity of sites and directing developers in that way so that you don’t have somewhere that cannot cope with getting applications. Overnight I think you would see the applications drop because developers will not put applications into areas where they know there is no hope of getting permission. It is hopefully to direct them if you map sensitivity and capacity across areas.

Can I just drill down a little bit further into that? There were two recommendations there from across the panel on strategic identification of the least sensitive sites. Where do you think the responsibility for that should lie? How do you see that being incorporated into our current ways of working at the local authority level?

It is to do with the production of local plans. The problem is they will now be out of date with the increased housing allocations, but that is the point at which—

It should happen within the local planning process, yes, development.

Yes, exactly.

Yes, or if it is a combined authority, their combined local planning position as well.

Could I just come back in? If we can go back one question to the recruitment and retention issue, I am hearing from quite a few of you that the problem is around the inadequate resource for growing demand. I am just thinking about my previous career in local government, where if you think about other mandated requirements on developers, the developer is required not only to make a financial contribution, but that they are ring-fenced. If you think about CIL—Community Infrastructure Levy—the developer is effectively being taxed to make sure that any changes to highways are absolutely locally spent and it is ring-fenced for that development, for that area and the developer is taxed. You could say the same for the section 106. Do you think there is a space here for some kind of ring-fenced tax on the developer because it is a legal requirement for them to do BNG? That would then bring in a proportionate amount of funding related to the amount of work for the additional BNG requirements.

You could do. That would require more legal resource though. That is again something else that is in short supply within most planning authorities. That is why many of the smaller developers don’t have a section 106 to secure the BNG because it would result in an increased delay while they waited to get that produced.

Largely developers now have a kind of tick box, where they know they will have to tick these three boxes to get approval, especially to get into a local plan, so they will just tick those boxes because they don’t want a delay, because a delay is a cost to a developer. Maybe there is a space there around ring-fenced requirements that are specifically allocated to fund this, because if it is requirement that we do this work then there must be a requirement that it is paid for at source.

Yes, agreed. I think it also needs a mindset within local authorities, because often section 106 and CIL tends to be focused on capital improvements to sites. I think it is very hard to then argue within the local authority for a proportion to be revenue funding to pay for somebody. Maybe being more flexible about how that money is then allocated would certainly be very well supported by planning authorities.

Your example of the combined authorities, where they perhaps have a pool of people, some of those might be consultants that could be capitalised, but you also need the option for direct employees. Last, on your point about retention, through EDI—equality, diversity and inclusion—policies, you should be able to get additional support for the neurodiverse. If it is any consolation, for the work of MPs, this place is also not built for neurodiverse people either, so please keep pushing to support your colleagues. Thank you.

Dr Martin, the Government are focused on brownfield first as their response to achieving these planning targets. We have heard from previous panels that many of these brownfield sites that have maybe laid dormant for 15 or 20 years are quite nature rich and the biodiversity net gain might be a tougher achievement on a brownfield site than it would be on a farmer’s field that usually had lamb on it or whatever. Do you see that the Government’s push to achieve their housebuilding targets on brownfield sites will be easier or more difficult from a nature restoration and recovery standpoint?

That is quite difficult for me to comment on, but again it goes back to the point I made in terms of the right place and right development. I think it will totally depend on the site and the conditions that you are looking at. Again, we talked about that sensitivity and capacity surveying that would come, and you would see those brownfield sites either sit in a red grade or a green grade, depending on the local conditions. Again, the importance of collecting that local data and the top-down data and connecting those gives you the best information to make a decision on those sites.

What about yourself, Dr Boulton? Do you see the brownfield first approach being difficult from a BNG perspective for developers to achieve?

Yes. There are some brownfield sites that I think organisations like Buglife and Butterfly Conservation have surveyed and have shown they are incredibly ecologically rich sites and therefore challenging to develop without losing that biodiversity interest. That doesn’t mean to say all brownfield sites cannot be developed. I think it is about understanding what the brownfield site contains and what it contributes to nature recovery and then seeing whether parts of that site, if not all of it, could be redeveloped as well.

Yes. Certainly, for some of us in areas like mine, in north Derbyshire—I walk past brownfield sites in London that are getting developed like that—I look at sites in Chesterfield that would have been there 20 years, and the economics just don’t add up the same. Do you see this leading to a two-tier system of wealthier areas, more easily developed brownfield sites, and those upcountry, where the Government are saying they want to see this housing growth in all kinds of areas that maybe have not had as much growth in recent years, will find it much more difficult?

Yes, there is that risk as well. I think that needs to be carefully thought through as well.

Continuing that theme, is there any reason why a brownfield site with biodiversity introduced through the development process couldn’t be put back to the original state in terms of biodiversity, following the completion of the development? Would the removal of contamination, for example, from a brownfield site not be seen as a positive in terms of biodiversity?

It all depends on your understanding of the site because there are some habitats you can recreate, you can do it, but some types of habitat are harder to recreate very easily. Particularly some contaminated land, for instance, might contain woodland that has grown over time, which is incredibly rich in nature, whereas creating new woodland from scratch is nigh on impossible. One of the interesting areas—and it probably relates to Derbyshire—is about railway land. All former railway land was abandoned because they didn’t need the sidings, yet they were contaminated because of all the materials, but they turned into some of the best woodland habitats we have. Network Rail is under pressure to obviously realise its assets and may want to release some of that land for development. It is contaminated; it contains woodland. Which one do you do first? It is about having that whole view of the site and understanding what we can do and what we cannot do. In the longer-term interests of the residents and the people who live there, we may need housing development on part of the site, but part of the site we can leave behind and then we can integrate nature into the development, which has ecological value.

Excellent, thank you.

A similar point: we have heard some debate during this inquiry around the proposals for grey belt. I wondered, as ecologists, what your thoughts were on that because I know I have seen in the press some debate back and forth about, “Scrubland is ugly” versus, “It is biodiverse”. Thoughts on that?

Scrub is one of the most ecologically valuable habitats there is.

Do you have concerns about the concept of scrub being identified as grey belt?

Yes.

Yes. I know of at least seven or eight bird species that use scrubland as their breeding habitat. Of course, as we know, all wild birds are protected by law from being disturbed during nesting season.

Very briefly, Dr Boulton, you mentioned Buglife. I think this Committee, in a previous life, has heard evidence from Buglife in relation to brownfield sites, where specifically it was chemical sites and contaminated chemical sites that had some extremely rare and valued biodiversity on it from an invertebrate point of view. How do we go about managing those trade-offs?

It is hard, because you cannot just stop developing a site that is heavily contaminated because there is a public health issue, there is an environmental health issue for contaminated land, because again it adds to the pollution of our watercourses and our land. Are there opportunities to recreate that kind of habitat on an alternative site, on a nearby site or leave it on part of the site and remove most of the contamination? I do a lot of work in the Netherlands, and we find examples there where they have gone to town on bio-remediating quite a lot of old former industrial sites. It is an up-front cost to a developer, but the long-term benefit is that they are able to develop the sites but also integrate their nature into the site as well by creating new features as part of the landscaping, which to an average insect that is looking for somewhere to rest down, that habitat is just as good. It needs a little bit of cross-country working to see what they are doing well. It is not necessarily European Union countries. This could be countries outside the European Union as well.

Thank you so much, Ms Postlethwaite, Dr Boulton and Dr Martin. We have very much appreciated your evidence today. That brings to a close the first panel. Witnesses: Dr Victoria Hills, Ben Kite and Charlotte Neal.

Welcome to the second panel of our session today. I am delighted to be joined by Mr Kite, Dr Hills and Ms Neal. Can I ask you to introduce yourselves and your organisations and knowledge in this area?

I am here in my capacity as the currently elected Chair of the Strategic Policy Panel of the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management. CIEEM represents more than 8,000 ecologists and environmental managers, mainly working in the land use planning system. My day job though, I am a consultant ecologist and director of an ecological consultancy.

I am reassured, based on what we have heard, that there are 8,000 ecologists in Britain, so that is a positive step. Victoria Hills.

I am Chief Executive of the Royal Town Planning Institute. I am a chartered town planner, but I have left practice to do this job. We advocate for our 27,000 members globally. Most of them are in the UK and Ireland, but a growing membership globally. Broadly half are in the public sector and local government, which we have been hearing from, and the other half are in the public sector and also academia. We are a charity. We work in the public interest, and we are also a learned society, so when I talk about research, which is very much independently led on behalf of our members. Thank you.

Good afternoon. I am Director of Surveying Practice at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. I am a chartered surveyor myself and, like Victoria, I left practice to work at the RICS. We have over 140,000 members globally, who work all across the whole lifecycle of the natural and built environment, right through from mineral extraction, construction, building and surveying through to the end use of properties. We are here because we can represent in terms of how we implement and look at the skills gaps and the necessary regulation of professionals across the industry.

Thank you very much. Before we commence our evidence, I will call my colleague, Alison Taylor. I think she has an interest she wanted to declare at the start of this panel.

Thank you, Chair. I would just like to draw everyone’s attention to my entry in the register of interests. Before becoming an MP, I was a chartered surveyor, but I am still a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

Excellent, thank you very much. If I could start with you, Dr Hills. The Government plan to build 1.5 million homes in England over the life of this Parliament. What needs to be in place for that to be achieved without damaging the natural environment and impairing current levels of biodiversity?

We very much advocate for a plan-led system. We already heard from the last witness that not too many local authorities seem to have an up-to-date local plan these days. The truth is it is closer to about 40% who do, which means 60% do not broadly have an adopted local plan. The first answer to your question is everything needs to start with a plan. It has to be plan-led. If local areas know what they would like to be delivered, then they can work out where best to put it. One of the ways that you meet everybody’s demands and needs, including nature and biodiversity, is to have what you have already very clearly understood and where you want to get to. That needs to start through that statutory plan-making process. We are relatively agnostic if it is at local level, or far more strategic. We have been advocating for strategic planning, with more to come on that. Therefore, plan-led is very important, but of course you can have the best plan in the world, but if you have nobody to help support delivery, then you come a bit unstuck. We have just been hearing from some of the earlier witnesses where that can cause tension. Good resourcing of local government at this particular moment in time is essential. There are lots of ecologists. Many of them work across sectors and many of them may not be in local government. Is that necessarily a problem? Not necessarily, if local government can buy them in, but they still need budgets to do that. Resourcing is critical, well-resourced planning departments. Our research shows—to an earlier question in the previous session—broadly 50% of local government planning departments have disappeared over the last decade. Indeed, our research shows in the last seven years we have lost 25% of local authority planners in local government. It is hardly a wonder when you may hear from other witnesses about delays. If a quarter of your staff are no longer there, then of course you are going to be waiting a little bit longer for some of those answers and permissions. How do you fix it when times are tight? What we are advocating for and have been for some time—but we will have another go through the Planning and Infrastructure Bill—is for ring-fencing of planning fees. While Treasury’s position has always been it is not possible, if things are getting quite critical against that backdrop of lack of resources, you do need to have some innovation in fiscal policy to help you solve that. We will be advocating for ring-fencing planning fees so that when developers pay for services and the business of development, including ecology and everything else within it, they can get that service. The beauty of that is development then adds that growth that everybody is very keen to see locally, which indeed can help bring more revenue into council budgets. Planning is very much seen as that growth. Local plan led, strategic plan led, and resourcing is very fundamental to answering your question.

Certainly on the question of the local plan, the Government would not disagree with you. They have been outspoken about the fact they expect every local authority to have a plan and will take action if they don’t. Can you just briefly explain why you think we are in a position where 60% of local authorities don’t have a signed-off local plan?

I will try to do that very briefly. Resourcing has been part of it. With 50% of budgets and 25% of officers going, local plans have been hit very hard, but you will be aware that there has been talk of planning reform for quite some time. Indeed, just taking the last four years alone, we have two White Papers and a Bill. We are about to go into more Bills. If you are charged with producing a local plan locally and you have to answer to your local taxpayers, you may have taken a decision to pause production of that local plan until you knew where the rules were going to end up in order to avoid any abortive work. We won’t comment on that—that is for local leaders to decide—but I suspect some of the back and forth on planning policy may have seen some delays in production of local plans. We have been very clear with the Minister and his team. Of course, we recognise why any incoming Government wants to make legislative change, primary and secondary, but could we have it quickly, please, so that communities, local leaders and our members, everybody knows what the rules of the game are and then they can move forward with the local plan? It is a combination of the lack of funding and resourcing to produce these local plans and then some of the complexities associated with changing some of those rules. Indeed, you may well hear more of that. We are where we are with it. There is an important need to move forward quickly and nail down those legislative requirements as soon as possible.

Thank you. Mr Kite, what do you see needs to be in place in order for the Government to be able to build the number of houses they wish to without damage to the natural environment?

I would echo a lot of what you have just heard from Dr Hills. I think the plan-led system is absolutely crucial. However, whether we are talking about the potential to switch to environmental outcome reports under the Planning and Infrastructure Bill that is coming, or whether we are looking at the Government’s planning reform paper that was published before Christmas, those all advocate a switch to a more strategic approach to dealing with environmental problems upstream in the planning process in one way or another. We can get into the detail of that later. I think the core principle of that is good. We do need to get out in front of environmental problems and put in place solutions so that when the development happens, it can happen swiftly, there is no delay, there is no logjam. What I would say though is that if you are going to effectively lock in decisions earlier on in the planning process, you also need to frontload the environmental collection and environmental assessment processes so that the consequences of those decisions are properly understood, so that the development is directed to the right site and the right places and the right quantum in the right way. Otherwise, what happens is you lock in bad decisions and then when the development is delivered, you are up against the environmental buffers and there are more delays, there are more logjams. I see that as crucial. I can go into more detail on that if you wish, but perhaps when we come on to the Nature Restoration Fund. Capacity in local authorities is an issue. CIEEM is aware that the ecology sector as a whole is under-resourced. That is likely to present quite a barrier. CIEEM has prepared a briefing on this for the Minister for Nature called “Green Jobs for Nature” and it has a Green Jobs for Nature programme. I am told that we are at liberty to share that briefing if it would be of interest to the Committee. Effectively, we know we need to greatly increase the capacity of not just ecologists but ecologists with a particular understanding of the way that the land use planning system works, because it doesn’t help if you are incredibly expert in a particular type of living organism if you don’t know how to advise land use planning decisions to bring about a better outcome for those things. It is a particular part of the ecology sector that we need to upskill. CIEEM has been doing such things as introducing level 4 apprenticeships and skills boot camps and finding non-degree pathways for entry into the profession. It has its Green Jobs for Nature initiative, as I mentioned. It has been forming partnerships between employers and stakeholder organisations to help bring people into the profession. There is a whole load of other initiatives that are in the briefing that I can share. Pay is definitely an issue. Office for National Statistics data suggests that the graduate starting salary for an ecologist is about £7,000 less than a nurse or a teacher and about £9,000 less than a planner. We also know, for example, that with bodies like Natural England, an agency attached to DEFRA, ecologists that work in that organisation will be paid less than equivalent grades in other parts of DEFRA, for example. That does not encourage people to enter the profession. Something that I would add to that is there needs to be greater value placed on the natural environment as a profession. Some of the rhetoric and the politics that surround that discourages people from joining the sector. At the moment CIEEM is carrying out a survey of its members, the State of the Profession survey. That is not finished yet, but as of—

If I can stop you there. We will get a chance to explore this, but I am keen to stick to the question at this stage. The planning institute believes we need more planners; ecology believe we need more ecologists. Now we will turn to the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. What do we need more of? From your perspective, what do you think that the Government need to make sure is in place in order for their housebuilding targets to be met without damaging the environment?

You are not going to be surprised if I follow that theme. It is a lack of skills. We need qualified people, but not necessarily just in new ways of thinking and new ways of working. For example, if you get the planning and then you start constructing, you need the building control specialists to sign off that the buildings are fit for purpose, meet the required requirements and that they understand the environmental regulations and implications within that as well. That goes right across the life cycle. We need more environmental surveys, and we need more surveyors in construction who understand carbon and how to decarbonise the buildings that we create and that understand about embodied carbon. Also there needs to be a greater understanding of where materials come from. All those skills need to be built on top of, for example, the building control skills, where there is just generally a lack of building control inspectors. In fact, there are people leaving the industry and going completely away from land and built environment. That is a real challenge because, as Dr Hills said, we need to speed up the planning system because the delays in the planning system have financial consequences for the developers. If we are looking for them to put new measures in around preserving the environment, which often come at a cost, we need to find that cost elsewhere. If we can shorten the timescales around planning, that frees up resource to help with identifying and implementing the requirements around the environmental and sustainable measures.

I think the Government would agree. I have heard the Prime Minister and others say on many occasions they are looking to speed up the planning process and it is far too long in this country. I was being slightly facetious in my question, but the point was a good one, which is that we hear this all the time, “If only there were more people doing my job everything would be better”. The Government clearly have the same aim as you: they want to speed up the planning process. To what extent does the Government therefore need to be more prescriptive about what the demands are so that both developers and planners know what the expectation is so that this whole process can be intervened in less? Is that something that you would expect the Government going forward—and we have heard the Prime Minister say previously, if it is in the local plan and it meets with that test then it should not be going to councils, it should be able to get this much more quickly. Ms Neal, do you think we need to see Government in their planning frameworks being much more prescriptive about what is and is not acceptable so that everyone knows where we are?

Absolutely. It is unclear when you put a planning application in as to whether you will definitely get consent or not. That is causing delays and that stalls the entire market. As we all know, developing nothing creates nothing, developing something gives us the homes that we need. There is also a need—while focusing on new build as well—to look at retrofit, which may not be delayed in the same way by planning and is part of the solution to delivering these ambitious targets for 1.5 million homes.

Do you see differences effectively on identical applications across two different local authorities, two difference planners will interpret the same rules differently?

I think Dr Hills is probably better placed to answer that question but I—

I am interested in your perspective; I am about to ask her. Do you see that this is something that happens?

Yes, and there are different timescales depending on which authority is looking at your application. There can be a perception that certain authorities have a different take on the type of development that you want to create and the importance of the sustainability and environmental considerations within that.

Coming to you, Dr Hills, how prescriptive would you like to see Government be? Do you think these decisions are best taken locally in local context, or we need Government to be more prescriptive so we do not need as much discussion about whether or not something will be approved?

There are two particular points to that question, and to make the point, in the UK we have a discretionary planning system—

You would make a great politician, by the way.

—and the discretionary system is emulated by about half the world, particularly the Commonwealth, and the permitting zoning system is in the other half of the world. We have had a discretionary system in the UK for the last 80 or 90 years, and despite all the complaints and moaning people quite like it because they can have a say, and there is a democratic mandate for councils to get involved in the community and all the rest of it. That being said, to answer your question, what would help provide some greater certainty, some greater consistency? One of the things that came out of the previous Planning Act—because it did make it that far, the LURA—was national development management policies. We will be urging the Government to not leave those on the shelf but dust them off please, and if can have some conformity, some standard policies, the sort of things that have just been referred to, so that you are not playing a guessing game locally on the interpretation; that would be a helpful thing. The national development planning framework is meant to create the rules—that is the big strategic rulebook—and then you have local planners to interpret those rules locally. If you could take some of the mystery out by having national development management policies we think that would be helpful. We were obviously waiting for a consultation on those, went into an election and the rest is history, but the provision is still there. That is very important, but so is the second part of your question, ensuring that you do not lose what is the gem in our system globally, and that is the democratic accountability, the transparency and the ability to involve local communities. That is important and I do not think there is any sense of moving away from that, but by doing that, that means where you need you will take things to a planning committee for that rigour and oversight.

Could I challenge that? I am not sure you are right. I have heard the Prime Minister and others say we should not be having so many decisions go into local planning committees. If we have a local plan, if the plans that have been submitted are in an area that has been approved for housing, and we have an approved local plan then there should be a presumption of acceptance. How confident can you be that that local oversight will still be wanted?

The second point I was going to make was exactly that. All too often our members have their decisions overturned by local councillors when things are in conformity with a local plan. What we are advocating for, and will be through the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, is where you have a competent chief planning officer—we feel that should be a statutory position, by the way, it is not currently—

Many are not.

Sorry?

How many do you assess are not competent?

All of our members are competent; not all chief planners are our members, which is the point I am trying to make. We would like to have competent chief officers and, therefore, if you have a competent chief planning officer they are perfectly capable with their professional standards at taking a decision on something that is in conformity with a local plan, does that need to go to a committee or not? That is the conversation Government are having through their working paper on planning committees, which is what you referred to. I think we agree that there is a route for having competent officers deal with things that are in conformity with a local plan, but what I am saying is don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater; you need to have the scrutiny there for the things that are not in conformity so that the local people can have their say through their elected leaders as to whether or not that development is appropriate.

Coming to Ms Neal’s point—and this is something I have heard from developers and others before—that the rules are the rules, but you go to one council and they will interpret it like this, and another council will be more laissez-faire on it. Is this because different planners make different decisions or because there is a lack of clarity in what these rules mean?

I do not think there is any lack of clarity in what the National Planning Policy Framework means. I do not think there is any lack of clarity or understanding from our competently professionally qualified planners in their advice to committees. There may be some differences of opinion by local elected leaders, maybe. That is what I was referring to in overturns. That is a democratic mandate that exists. There is a current proposal on the table that may seek to change that through planning committees going forward. That is not for us to comment further; that is a Government proposal at the moment. All I am saying is in that scenario we would want anybody charged with taking those decisions that were in conformity with the local plan to be a statutory chief planning officer with a professional qualification attached.

Yes, I take that. Mr Kite, we have heard that maybe we need Government to be a bit more prescriptive. Do you have any concerns about that? Do you think that will remove the extent that ecologists are listened to because Government have set more prescriptive rules, or would you support that more prescriptive approach?

I do not think it would be problematic if the formulation of those rules at the national level had the appropriate input from ecologists and from the regulatory and statutory agencies involved in ecology, so Natural England, the Environment Agency, and maybe even the Office for Environmental Protection, for example. I have a lot of personal experience of planning applications where professional officers have recommended approval, the local ecologist has been happy, but then concerns have been raised by elected councillors. I do recognise what Dr Hills is saying there between the national imperative for delivering homes, and local resistance. That is an issue that strays outside my remit; it is not an ecological issue, it is to do with balancing democratic priorities, so I think that is where my commentary has to stop. But fundamentally, when the National Planning Policy Framework or any set of rules is written, as long as it has the right input and it keeps key golden threads such as, for example, the mitigation hierarchy—the need to avoid harm first, mitigate harm and then compensate for a last resort—recognition of key principles like critical natural capital, irreplaceable habitats, things that you cannot put back, and giving them appropriate weight, as long as that is all there I would not have too much problem.

Do you feel there is any danger that nature and biodiversity are seen as second order priority to net zero considerations in house building expansions, or do you think there is a synergy between the two?

Interestingly, the way that the legislation has come forward for some biodiversity aspects—let’s take biodiversity net gain; the statutory basis that that has is, in a game of planning, top trumps. It sits right at the top currently. It even comes before affordable housing delivery, so there is no danger of biodiversity not being important in the planning process. The danger is in the implementation of it, as we were hearing in the last session. The statutory status afforded to it through the Environment Bill is quite significant and it is very important indeed. That is why this whole issue has arisen quite quickly over the last year because it is a clear statutory requirement for development to commence. Arguably, it has at the moment more of a legal weight to it than net zero. We are advocating that net zero catches up a bit in the legislation, but that is for a different session.

We heard from some previous speakers that the enforcement is not quite so strong and when we asked about penalties nobody could scratch around and find any. Is it perhaps the case that although the legal words might be there, the follow up enforcement and penalties is not quite in place and, therefore, it does not necessarily flow through?

To be clear, we have looked at this issue quite a bit. If I was speaking to my chief officers, as I did a lot last year, and said, “What are your top two issues?” this would be right up there with nutrient neutrality because of the preparedness point; how will it work? What I will preface before I say anything next is it is very early days, this is a new system, it is completely new, and it will take some time to bed in. You do not have to take my word for it, you could read the national DIP report from last May that came up with 10 recommendations precisely on these points of monitoring, oversight, data, enforcement, consistency of policies. You name it, they have listed the lot out. You could almost lift the 10 recommendations out and put them in your report because, as far as I know, DEFRA has not responded to that report yet. They are quite serious recommendations that are now manifesting themselves in some of the evidence you have heard this afternoon already. I can speak on the behalf of members who work in the private sector and the public sector, and what they would say is it is a bit of a mixed picture. It is very market led, you have some solutions coming forward and working incredibly well and then you have, for example, some local authority monitoring that perhaps is not happening at all. The picture is a bit mixed.

That is very helpful. Could I ask you, Ben Kite, the same question about whether those two compete or whether they are in synergy, the net gain and the zero?

I think there should be a synergy there, which is often not recognised. For example, nature-based solutions to adapting to climate change or mitigating climate change, the potential of those is under-recognised in the planning process. To give you one example, in 2022 the All-Party Parliamentary Group had a meeting of experts that the Floodplain Meadows Partnership was invited to. That highlighted the fact that if only a relatively small amount of floodplain meadows were restored to a species rich grassland—a lot of them are currently drained for arable use or other mainly agricultural forms of use, and a vast amount of carbon could be locked up in British floodplains—other benefits would also flow from that, such as floodwater attenuation, cleaning water before it gets to rivers to improve nutrient neutrality; those sorts of things. Those opportunities are not actively seized because of inadequate filtering of that environmental information into decision-making in the plan led process. For example, if local nature recovery strategies were to identify areas where floodplains could be restored and local authorities were to pick up the measures that are needed to do that, turn them into a tariff effectively so that smaller developers could deliver their biodiversity net gain commitments more easily, that could fund the restoration of floodplain meadows across the country, sequester carbon, improve flood resilience, all of those benefits. It is currently lost; it is not there. In answer to your question there should be a synergy there, but it is not adequately recognised.

That is such a fantastic example. Could I ask you to write in with more details about that? We are looking for examples exactly like that to help us understand. Could I quickly ask you the same question, whether net gain and net biodiversity are in synergy or are competing demands on housebuilders?

We obviously welcome the biodiversity net gain and the 10% increase but I do not think that is the solution on its own. We have to look at embedding better carbon capture and carbon consideration. RICS feel very strongly about this, and we have in the last 12 to 18 months worked on delivering the whole life carbon assessment standard, along with doing industry collaboration on the built environment carbon database, which will provide the data to support the consistent measurement of carbon within the natural and built environment processes. On top of that we also are part of a wider industry collaboration for the UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard, and all this is to help that consistent measurement that we need on top of looking also at my colleague’s comments about flooding, for example. If we build in all of these areas we reduce the amount of surface water drainage that there is and that then leads back into additional flooding, exacerbating the climate crisis problems that are being created. That is not good for growth within the country.

It does feel as though that might be quite voluntary. You are providing availability of a dataset, you are asking applicants to tell us first about biodiversity net gain and then secondly to tell us about carbon, and they can access this database if they want to, to apply it. Is there not then opportunity to put all that together in that application, that it be a single question and that they be required to use that dataset? At the moment surely all of this is voluntary; is that right?

RICS members have to adopt the whole life carbon assessment as part of their regulatory requirements under the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. When we produced the standard we wrote it with the entire industry in mind so, yes, for other members who are not part of our professional body it is their choice to adopt it, but we are seeing obviously that particularly larger institutional investors and developers, the requirements for their own stakeholders—their shareholders, for example—are requiring greater consistency. There is also obviously financial reporting that requires this, and that is why the consistency of measurement is so important. We all know you cannot have five buildings being the first carbon zero building.

Anything that could encourage or enforce that consistency of measure could help to make sure you are all using the same units?

Absolutely, and if we can embed that in the whole process as something that people do adopt and use then the comparisons across the industry and what you are delivering as well will help to support the growth that we need because it will be easier to understand what you are doing.

Thank you very much, that is great.

This leads beautifully on to the question I wanted to ask, which was about embodied carbon and whole life carbon assessment, so a lovely segue there. Ms Neal, to drill down on that, it sounds like you are saying that in the absence of Government regulating on embodied carbon, basically organisations like RICS have worked together within the sector to come up with standards because of essentially a hole in the Government’s engagement in regulation of embodied carbon and whole life carbon assessment. Is that a fair characterisation?

We believe there was a gap and, therefore, we created the whole life carbon assessment standard to meet that gap and to allow that consistency of understanding of terminology and how to apply it and measure it, and to create that consistent methodology. Across industry further gaps have been identified, which is why the UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard is made up of—there were ten founding members, but we are supported with sponsors from much wider parties within the industry who felt there was a need for this standard. That standard is voluntary, unlike whole life carbon for the Royal Institution members, and the built environment carbon database was to capture a lot of the information that would be needed to feed into the whole life carbon assessment and UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard. They all talk to each other as well to make sure that we are not creating confusion and that the result is clarity and better measurement.

But these are all effectively voluntary measures within the framework of a lack of clear Government policy and strategy on this—

If we could get the Government policy to embed it, it would be a fantastic solution.

What do you think about the fact that the updated MPPF makes no mention of embodied carbon?

We would welcome a consultation around embodied carbon and the subsequent solutions and regulations being put in place around that.

Yes, we need more than a consultation; we need regulation on this. How well equipped is the building sector itself to address embodied carbon? Of course it is becoming increasingly important; we have seen evidence that suggests if 1.5 million homes are built in the next five years the embodied carbon in those homes could eat up 5% to 9% of the UK’s carbon budget in the next five years. As buildings become somewhat more energy efficient the embodied carbon becomes a more and more significant component, does it not? How well equipped is the building industry overall to tackle this?

I think there are two different groups here. Obviously the larger and leading parties within the built environment are often more informed and have the advice provided to them, with the understanding and skills that sit behind that to be able to understand what it means and to look at innovative ways, and to introduce new technology into the work they are doing. What we need is greater upskilling for the smaller SME developers, for example, who may not have that support network to explain and to embed the required understanding, knowledge and practical solutions around this. At the RICS we are doing a piece of work on carbon terminology because we recognise that there is a lack there, it is not consistent across the industry, the understanding around this and the importance of it. Where there is less understanding there is an element of fear and, therefore, you do not get the implementation in the same way. That is not true of everyone though. There are plenty of often larger developers or institutional investors who are building out who do have that knowledge, but it needs to be more joined up right across the value chain.

Thank you. Perhaps to you or to other members of the panel if you would like to comment; Ms Neal talked about the potential of new technology to help address this—AI, we always need to ask a question about AI. Are there technologies that will be helpful in the next five years in terms of reducing the embodied carbon footprint of those 1.5 million homes? Can you give examples of those?

I am happy to go first. I think one of the best tools or gifts that AI can give us is better manipulation of data in a positive sense and having open access data on all of the things we have talked about, carbon biodiversity, nature, environment generally. Part of the challenge at the moment of trying to find out exactly what is going on is that the data is all held in various places, some of it is privately owned, some of it is not, and you have heard from an industry body that has had to set up a standard in the absence of there being one. I think what AI will do is help us get a better handle on at least the baseline situation so that you can do some consistent monitoring at a big data level that everybody can get involved in—regardless of whether they’re an SME, medium sized, major developer—and putting that open source should be a priority for the Government. That is where we need to get to on carbon data and all environment data. That is where I would suggest that AI could be helpful and to know where you need to get to you need to have an accurate picture of everything that is going on currently, and I am not sure if we have that across the whole development piece, which tends to work in a rather siloed way. There is definitely room for improvement there. But also, within AI—and you will know this already—there is an urgent need for some guidance and clarity on how it is used, how it is not used, and some industry standards not just for us but industry standards for AI so that we can know how it can be used and, quite frankly, be on the front foot rather than the back foot. If we take biodiversity net gain, AI is being actively used in monitoring it, but the standards are not there, there are no monitoring guidelines especially that say how it could be used, so local authorities are left looking at this stuff saying, “Well, it looks okay to me, but is it really?” That is because it has been market led, industry led, so if we could have some standards as to what sort of data is required, how it is required in the context of BNG, but also how AI can be used and not used, that would be very helpful. I feel that this is the year that AI is moved around into the pole position is kind of getting on with its stuff. I think the industry needs to catch up and say what good looks like, and that needs to happen quite urgently.

The only thing I would add to that is on the use of AI for complicated tasks, such as biodiversity net gain assessment, for example. It definitely has a lot of potential for processing large volumes of data and helping a limited ecological workforce deal with the workload, but I do not think it yet is at the stage where you can absent human checking from the process. There are a number of companies out there at the moment that offer AI-led biodiversity net gain assessments; I have not looked at them, but I have looked at a couple and they were considerably wrong once I had ground-truthed and been there to see what was there in practice. What they do is they look at open source data and satellite imagery to try to work out what habitats are present, and some habitats are so similar it is not possible to tell so the AI makes mistakes. I do not think we are at the stage yet where you can absent a human checking stage. There is a very interesting project being led at the moment by the University of Surrey—I think it is called Space for Nature—where satellite tools are being used to map habitats and then they are going out and ground-truthing what is there and feeding that information back into the machine learning process to help the AI become more sophisticated at classifying habitats. They are probably about as far ahead as it is possible to get and there are commercial services not at that stage that are offering services. It definitely has a lot of potential. It has not an area we can afford to ignore if we want to achieve building on the scale that the Government have as an aspiration it has got to be embraced as a tool, but I would add a note of caution that it needs to be done carefully.

May I add to that? In using AI, it is about the responsible use of it but also we need the human element to be able to ask the right questions of the AI, and to identify the variables that we understand take place in the market to ensure that the question is right and that you have asked it to consider the right factors. While it can definitely help optimise better design of buildings by being able to model operational and embodied carbon and can help with land acquisition and looking at scope three emissions and BNG, you need to be able to ask it the right question and you need to have confidence that you can then interrogate the answer to ensure it is correct from that point of view. RICS is actively working on producing some guidance and best practices around responsible use of AI. But slightly wider on the tech point; AI is great but there are other technologies that we can build into new homes to help support carbon capture or better energy homes, lower carbon, but you need the users who are living in those homes to be able to understand how to use that technology and what it means. It is not just about delivering the homes, creating them with better technology, but it is those who are using them employing that technology properly.

If we look at our total carbon budget between 2025 and 2030 we have been talking about embodied carbon. Can you give us an idea of what percentage of that total carbon budget would be taken up by embodied carbon of 1.5 million homes?

We have certainly not modelled that yet so I could not comment. We could commit to come back to you if we have a handle on it, but it is not a percentage that I can put on the record here at this moment.

That would be very helpful if you would come back to us in writing. Mr Kite?

I am afraid that is beyond my knowledge.

We will come back to you in writing on that.

Thank you. We have received evidence that says it is between 5% and 9% of that total carbon budget. When we are thinking about all the other aspects of delivering on the fifth and sixth carbon budgets this will be a critical element. It is helpful to have the comments you have made, Ms Neal, from the point of view of RICS and the statement that you have made on whole life carbon, I think is extremely valuable to have as a standard. Can I ask about the Future Homes Standard, because that too should have a role in delivering our low carbon housing and I wonder if you feel it is ambitious enough?

We are awaiting the outcome of the consultation from the previous Government around the Future Homes Standard, and we would welcome the response sooner rather than later because obviously the regulations that sit under this need to be implemented and it causes delays and confusion if developers are not able to see what they will have to build and make sure that they are meeting the requirements that we know are coming. Absolutely we welcome it. Often you can always improve on things; it is a minimum standard and obviously there are always organisations that go above and beyond and look to do that but ultimately often people will build to that minimum standard and that minimum standard obviously needs to be fit for purpose. If we want to embed within that all the environmental and sustainable requirements that we believe need to be in there, that needs to be done now and clearly so that everyone in the industry knows what those requirements are.

Basically when we look at things like solar panels there has been debate between the previous Government and this Government as to what the role of solar panels on new builds should be, but would you like to see it mandated that as a default—not in every case because it is not suitable in every case—but that the default should be that solar panels are on a new build unless it is clear that they would not be able to produce the carbon savings that we are looking for?

We would welcome multiple different answers to better energy efficiency and creating greener energy. I do not think it is just linked to the particular house either though; it has to go wider. We have to look at the grid, we have to look at innovative technologies and what they mean, and we have to do it quickly so that we have certainty that they will deliver the targets that we are trying to achieve and that there are not subsequent knock-on effects unintended further down the line and that what we are building now is fit for purpose in 30, 40, 50 years.

Let us look forward at the targets that we have for 2050 because the one thing we do know is that between 75% and 85% of the houses that we will have in 2050 have already been built. What is the importance of retrofitting here? How should we be looking at that in comparison with new build, and what are your views on that?

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors is fully supportive of retrofit alongside new build. We have created a retrofit standard for residential properties and that is to ensure that the public have high quality, highly skilled professionals delivering that retrofit advice to them to make sure that they are genuinely retrofitting to the right standards, that they are future proofing those properties and that they will be resilient to changing climate.

If I can turn to Dr Hills, when an application comes forward to bulldoze and existing property should there be an obligation to look at retrofitting before that happens?

I think there is an opportunity to look at strengthening the requirements on that. To be clear, on this new homes standard our position we need that certainty and clarity as soon as possible. It has been back and forth and delayed and going on and on, and as you have pointed out, even if you decide it today when will it actually have an impact, because the pipeline is so long of stuff that is already in train. There is no day to waste on that point. On knocking down buildings, this is a particular pet topic of mine because before I did this job I ran London’s second Mayoral Development Corporation, and you only have to put a ring around a piece of land and say, “That’s where we would like to start developing” and guess what, people start knocking buildings down before you can get to it. I am not naming any names but if they are watching they will know who I am talking about. I am all for strengthening the opportunity, the tools in the toolkit, to at least have a conversation before you start knocking buildings down. There are other people far better qualified to talk about this, but I would say, over and above the provisions of listed buildings, conservation areas and all the rest of it, it would seem sensible to have a conversation about whether or not it might be better to leave the building standing and retrofit it than knock it down. There are obviously some very high profile rows about this that have gone on quite recently and I am sure there will be lots more to come. Where we sit in all of that is it probably could benefit from some strengthening of that conversation part before we see, “Well, that’s a shame the building went” and that is speaking from experience.

I think you and I could become good friends on that one.

I will take you on a site visit and show you where some beautiful buildings once stood.

I have some in my own constituency, don’t you worry. So far, when we have been thinking about this issue of whole life carbon, what you said to us is, “We want clarity of standards, we want uniformity of application of those standards, and that will require Government mandating and regulation”. These are the things that you would like this Committee to recommend in the report, we take it?

Yes.

When it comes to the data, open source data with clarity of standards so that it is absolutely apparent to everybody what we are dealing with and what we are achieving as a result?

Absolutely, and I take my pupillage there from working for the previous Mayor of London who took a decision to make all the transport data open source because TfL was better at running services than it was at running tech platforms. In doing so, London’s traffic experience infinitely improved because all these tech platforms popped up and told you the best way to move around. It is the same principle, make the data publicly accessible and find solutions to have that open source monitoring, and at least everybody would understand what the starting point was.

Some very quick questions from me, and I would appreciate some very concise answers, if that is okay, because we have a lot to cover. This is all about BNG and first I want to ask you all: if Government does achieve the 1.5 million homes, will current biodiversity net gain requirements be sufficient to ensure that the natural environment is supported to recover? Yes or no?

We need to go further.

How about yourself, Dr Hills?

It should be, but it does need resourcing properly to enable planning departments to get on the front foot and being able to negotiate to push further than perhaps has previously arrived on the table.

Mr Kite?

Trying to keep it concise; biodiversity net gain asks developers to provide an enhancement over the habitats that they are losing effectively from the development site. It does not deal with the environmental impacts of the development in terms of whether or not something is being affected by air pollution, water pollution, recreational pressure, and so on. On its own, biodiversity net gain is not enough; it needs the whole mitigation hierarchy to be implemented through the planning system.

Would you specifically want to see an increase in net gain from 10% and would that feasible and how high would you want that to make it deliverable as well?

From my point of view, when I was saying we need more it was more akin to what my colleague was saying about looking at the wider implications as well—air pollution, and so on.

We will not put a percentage on it. We think that local authorities can be more ambitious in pursuing more creative biodiversity net gain, but in order for them to do that they do need to have a team in place to do it, and as we have already heard, those people just are not there or if they are it is one person, and they are doing everything. There is absolutely the opportunity to go further but we will not put a percentage on it because, as I said right at the start, we have a discretionary planning system and that is one of the beauties of it. People do not like it but because it is discretionary it means you can always go higher, and so everything is a minimum. That means you can be creative and deliver great things.

I think before you push beyond 10% we need to iron out the kinks with the current system and metric because there are occasions when the metric can result in a perverse outcome and where the process is hindering particularly, for example, the delivery small sites. Small development sites are struggling to meet their biodiversity net gain requirements. Also, as you heard from Ms Postlethwaite in the previous evidence session, problems with deliverability where what has been put in the calculation is not what appears on the ground. I think we need to iron out those problems first and get to 10%, because otherwise what happens is we just put a number on it to 20% and the negative consequences would be felt in particular by small developers, and it is not real because if we are not achieving 10% there is no point in going further. But once those things are ironed out then we can look at 20%. Some local authorities are already asking for 20% and have started to look at the viability of imposing that on developers.

Thank you, that is useful. How confident are you that there is sufficient transparency, consistency and accountability in the way that developers and builders are required to deliver BNG improvements? Shall we start again with you, Ms Neal? Sorry, I am just going right to left.

I think standards are the answer to the transparency because the regulation of those standards requires that transparency to be disclosed. It is part of a much bigger picture on this, and I think, depending on the size of the builder, it has a significant impact on how they are able to disclose and measure that sort of side of things.

Is there anything that you would recommend us to point to that might improve that situation?

I think we have to upskill more and make sure that people understand what the requirements are and how they assess that, and that they have access to professionals who can provide the correct advice. That is a real challenge for the smaller parties in the market.

From our perspective there is a credibility point here. Everybody wants to make it work and everybody wants it to work, and it is important it works because everybody notices what is going on in nature around them and we need to make it work. At the moment you have quite a curious system where you have some on site, some off site, some of it is monitored here by local authority, the stuff over there is monitored by, well, goodness knows who. “Who are they reportable to? But, hey, the system is working.” The whole thing needs to have a solid look at it for the credibility of the developer, the credibility of my members who are saying, “We need this, and we must deliver it and here is the tax” and pay for it and off we go. If you then have your members saying, “Hang on a moment, we have been into that field and there is nothing there” the whole thing turns into a bit of a ponzi system, quite frankly, and we all want to avoid that. We have to get it working better. There are some fantastic places where it is working and there are some horror stories. We would urge the Government to respond to the NAO report and come up with a very clear plan on how they will monitor the data, how they will recommend the enforcement happens, and how they are going to move to a plan-led system, rather than market-led. Because at the moment you have a case by case basis. A development pops up here, or we will do a bit offsite over there. If you are going to move to a land use framework in DEFRA, if you are going to move a nature recovery scheme to deal with nutrient neutrality, why are we dealing with BNG on a case-by-case basis? It makes no sense at all, so we have to elevate the whole thing into a strategic position. We would argue strategic planning is the place to do it. The Devolution Bill provides an opportunity to have new strategic planning. Let’s put nature at the heart of that and then you can bring in BNG and everything else.

Do you think that BNG is a bit of a gimmick and then not—

I do not think it is a gimmick. I think it is really important. I think there is a danger it gets seen as that. If you are just paying a tax and the trees weren’t there and the community got told a story that did not happen, then the whole credibility falls apart quite quickly. We could be world leading in our BNG, but there is an urgent need to, your words, “Sort the wrinkles out”, was it?

Yes.

We need to sort the wrinkles out.

Okay. Thank you. That is very useful.

I think I agree with what has been said before, really. I think the next stage of improving BNG beyond ironing out the wrinkles I mentioned before, is really drilling down on monitoring standards. As you have heard, you have this hotchpotch at the moment where we have some BNG delivered onsite and often the stewardship of that, those areas in the past would be handed to a management company with no ecological expertise or knowledge of how to deliver it and look after it. That has to improve, and a lot of developers are really cognisant of that risk at the moment, but they hand BNG to a management company that then makes a mess of it and then in 10 years’ time they are pointing to that and saying, “We are going to deliver this biodiversity net gain”, and people are pointing to the previous scheme saying, “We didn’t last time”. They are really aware of that, really worried about it and looking for solutions to make sure that those areas are handed to safe hands and monitored properly and looked after. The same is true of offsite sites that are looked after and monitored by responsible bodies. I think we need to move towards a concept of a high integrity, biodiversity unit so that what we saw initially in carbon markets, with the genuineness of a carbon unit being questionable in some instances, that that does not occur in the biodiversity unit market.

It is good to know that my constituency of South Cambridgeshire is one of those areas where they are pushing within the emerging local plan for 20% biodiversity net gain just because they see that it is within the margin of error trying to get 10%, but while trying to wrinkle out the errors, obviously. We have also heard here that it is not just about biodiversity net gain, it is also about the environmental enhancements across the board that are needed. We have heard from the Government the planned restoration, the Nature Restoration Fund. The Government have said that they will only put it into legislation if they can confirm that this will enable positive outcomes for the environment. Yet last week the Chancellor said that she would reduce environmental requirements on developers if they put into the fund, as this means that developers can get on with building and they do not have to worry about “the bats and the newts”, in her words. I would like to ask you particularly, Mr Kite, when you were saying that you wanted to look at the strategic nature of this and perhaps the Nature Restoration Fund can provide this, the question would be: how can the Nature Restoration Fund balance positive environmental outcomes at a strategic level while loosening requirements on developers?

I think the core principle behind the Nature Restoration Fund and the idea of having delivery plans to deal with environmental problems in that what you do is you identify environmental issues that may block development, you parachute in with a state-led intervention through a delivery body to create a plan for avoiding that effect and, therefore, remove the blockage. That core principle is a good one. We have needed that for a long time because a lot of the time what happens is development gets directed to where it is going to go. The problem is only picked up at project level and then that is when delays occur to developers. However, the planning reform paper isn’t really that clear on how that is going to work in practice. It creates more questions than it answers, I think. Sorry, I am going to be responding on this in full to the Government, so I will just pick up a few key points in it. One of them is that if you are going to take money off a developer, allow them to build and then the delivery body goes away, works out what the problem is, works out what the solution is to that problem, procures any land or resources it needs to, then delivers it, then sees whether or not it has worked. There is significant time lag, potentially, between enabling the development to happen and then the intervention coming about. The danger is that in that time lag harm occurs. For example, if there are waterways that are already over environmental thresholds for pollution, you are adding to that before the solution comes into play. You might end up with a River Itchen without salmon or lamprey because in that time period things were allowed to develop to a problem. The Government need to focus on implementing these delivery plans on environmental problems that are already known and where there is already a good evidence base for implementing a solution. They need to be done rapidly. What we must not do is fast-track action where there isn’t an evidence base for an effective solution and that time lag might become too great. I also think there is an issue about scrutiny here, because the paper that the Government put out seems to suggest that a delivery body will identify the problem, work out the solution, deliver the solution, monitor the solution and then tell you whether or not it has been effective. At no point, it seems, is there a third party saying, “Did it work? Is it likely to work?” and carrying out that independent check. If you are a local authority writing a local plan, you have to take it to a public examination and convince an inspector that it is sound and deliverable. I think these delivery plans are potentially just as consequential for our environment as a local plan, so they should have some form of check and balance in there somewhere, to say, “Is it likely to work?” and then later on, “Has it worked?” There has to be that accountability. There are other issues: the mitigation hierarchy, for example. To me, that is absolutely core. That is a golden thread that must not be lost. I could go on, but I sense probably that is enough. Other points will be in our formal response to the Government, and we can share that with the Committee.

If you could share it with the Committee that would be very good. If you have an example that you could show of where it has worked, where you think this is based on a very good example, we would really like to hear something like that.

I can certainly do that. One of the questions was: why do we need legal changes to make some of these things happen? Because there are already strategic approaches for Government to deliver SANG, places to absorb recreational pressure. It took a long time for those to come about and be implemented but they now exist, and they are now facilitating development. Why do we need an extra mechanism to do that? Why do we need to change the law? I think some of those questions are not really answered by the planning reform paper.

Thank you.

Just very briefly, we strongly support the strategic approach, and we have been asking DEFRA for that for some time. We are really delighted that it is moving towards this with Natural England. What I would say is that we are concerned about how those delivery plans are going to link with the local statutory spatial plan. We have not had any assurances yet that the two things are talking to each other and how they are talking to each other.

Can you just explain where that could create a problem?

Let’s just say Natural England was the delivery partner and it got some funding to deliver a solution to an identified problem, which was completely at odds with something in the local plan with some land that had been earmarked for development elsewhere. In this era of needing to smooth the regulation—not reduce regulation: get regulation working in a more efficient way, we would say, rather than removing it—you need all the checks and balances together. You have to start linking environmental reports to statutory land plans. I made the point to the Secretary of State on Friday when he launched the new land use plan for DEFRA—a really important document, but if it has no statutory basis it is just a wish list of things you might like to see. What we have to move towards is much more joining up between environmental plans, delivery plans, the new national land use plan, which is for agriculture, and then a national planning framework. One of the asks we are going in for the Planning and Infrastructure Bill is a national spatial plan. Other parts of the UK have one. We do not have one and all the time we don’t have one, you are going to have competing land uses. Natural England could come up with a fantastic scheme, but it could be completely at odds with something completely different that the local authority, combined authority, new development corporation or some other land entity with powers for bringing forward development to meet the growth agenda could have earmarked for that site. What will that result in? Nutrient neutrality mark II. I am being a little bit flippant there, but we have just lost two or three years of nutrient neutrality. “We don’t have a problem so we will just put in a moratorium on development”. We need to move to a more proactive way, which is your point, which is, “Let’s think about what good looks like and then we can all move to it, rather than having plans coming up in different areas that then clash together.” There has to be a way of working together so you can find the solutions for nature restoration along with the growth. We strongly believe the two can work together, but not in parallel universes. There is a danger that we have things going in parallel here again.

What would be your key recommendation for this Committee inquiry when it comes to what should accompany the Nature Restoration Fund?

We would want to see some sort of requirement for the fund and the delivery plans that are proposed, to talk to local spatial strategies, whether they be at district council level, county level, or a new regional subregional level. The two have to speak together. If they are prepared in isolation, that stores up problems further on down the line because, as we all know, land is in short supply in this country.

As I understand it, if we are hearing it, you say, “Great thing”, because they come in as the body. Say, “This is the problem. This is the way we can resolve it. To resolve it we would need this amount of land or this side of the rivers or this waterway because this is what will be able to do a nutrient neutrality exercise”.

Yes.

Then by the time you have got that and the time you are about to implement it the land is no longer available because it has been built on because we have the push for housing.

It may have been allocated for housing. It may have been allocated for a logistics plant, for power, for carbon storage. It could have been allocated for anything, but the chances are it was not just sitting there waiting for something to happen. The point is that it all needs to be joined up.

I would absolutely echo that. The key thing is, first, we need to thrash out what the terms of reference for these delivery plans will be because it is not really clear from the reform paper that came out. Not all environmental problems will be suitable for this solution. This might be useful for dealing with nutrient neutrality, dealing with air pollution, where there are multiple sources of environmental impact, diffuse over an area and the solution is obvious: identify, purchase and decommission other sources of pollution to create the environmental headroom. It is ideally suited for solving those problems, provided there is the evidence to demonstrate that the solution is going to work. Other environmental problems—just to give some species—like newts are suited to this because their habitat requirements are well understood. They need ponds. They need terrestrial habitat. Other species like bats, for example, might be very reliant on one particular site where they have a big maternity roost. You will not know that until you get to a project level assessment, you have done a survey of that site, and you have found that roost and you know that there is a very large of important rare bats there. Some problems will be solved by this—and it has the great potential of speeding the delivery of development—but there are also a lot of pitfalls, as well. We need clearer terms of reference on how this would work, the mechanisms that would be implemented and the powers that would be needed by the delivery body to obtain the solution and deliver it.

Am I understanding correctly that you could say that for some environmental issues that are caused by housing, a strategic approach could work—particularly with species that can easily colonise another area because they have the right habitat? But there are some species—for example, the UK bat species—that would not easily be able to because they are site loyal. They need that particular site or particular conditions and that is very difficult, so you could see species’ extinction if you are only basing it on that strategic level for some problems.

Yes. We know that newts need ponds of a particular type, and they need terrestrial habitat around those ponds. We can use survey techniques that are relatively low cost comparatively speaking—like eDNA—to find out where they are, where their important populations are and to replace whatever is taken from them by development. Bats, for example, are not one species; there are lots of UK species and they all have different habitat requirements. Some of them are generalists that might be more suited to this, but other rarer species have much more exacting habitat requirements. You would not know which part of the country, or even which part of a development site they are relying on until you have that site level data. So some problems are very suited to this kind of solution; others are not. Working those out has to be part of setting the system up.

I am conscious of time. I have two quick questions on the importance of local infrastructure and sustainable placemaking. I think these will be to everyone, but we need to keep the answers quite short if we can. Where do you see specific opportunities and challenges for local infrastructure to make a positive contribution to protect nature and minimise carbon emissions? Shall we start on the left, Mr Kite? Does this one catch you off guard?

It is a very broad question.

It is, yes.

A development of any kind can be negative or positive. I think it is a case of carrying out the development in an informed way that follows the mitigation hierarchy, minimises harm and then delivers on benefits. The particular benefits that any particular project can deliver will be informed by sourcing information, such as the local nature recovery strategy. What is needed here? What habitats are delivered to best effect here? I am not sure there is one single answer to that question but almost any development can be positive if it is done in the right way.

I will take a slightly different angle. Our starting point is the location of development, and you can have a significant impact on the sustainability of any development, homes or schools, whatever, by ensuring you are putting in something that is accessible by a public transport hub or walking and cycling. Our own research has shown that far too much development is still finding its way in locations that would not be classed as sustainable locations. The biggest day to day footprint you can have is actually how people are moving around, so it is important that we are putting the right homes, the right development in the right places. That is why we think a strategic approach to planning and moving away from homes allocated at very small district levels and districts arguing about those numbers. Stretching it out and looking at areas broader with homes, nature and infrastructure means you can have a sensible conversation about where you are putting development. You will put it around where the infrastructure is because there is no more sustainable location than somewhere where infrastructure already exists. Whether that be an out of town shopping centre that is no longer being used or whether it be a small town centre that is ripe for intensification. That will have a positive impact much more than if you were putting that development in locations that were not sustainable, that is, greenfield in the middle of nowhere.

I agree. You have to have the right place, the right infrastructure around that. There is no point in building, and someone has to travel an hour to work. It does not work in terms of carbon. It also does not work from a social point of view of their own personal experiences.

To help ensure that housing growth and environmental protection is in step, what do you want to see from the forthcoming Planning and Infrastructure Bill? Dr Hills, I have a feeling you may have quite a few suggestions here.

I will give you the top four asks caveated by: we have not quite submitted these yet. In no particular order, actually starting with a statutory purpose of planning would be really helpful. Understanding what we are trying to achieve. It could be sustainable communities, for example, but having a very clear statutory purpose of planning. We have achieved that through the Planning (Scotland) Bill, and we are now going to have a go here. That is number one. Second, also leading the way in Scotland is statutory chief planning officers. We did try to get it in the law but failed. We think that is really important because all of these things we have been talking about today are all serious and important. Having the right depth of experience and seniority at local government to drive forward these matters is an important statutory responsibility. We would like to see statutory chief planning officers. The third, I just mentioned: we would like a national spatial plan. We feel that we could all save many days, months, possibly years of our life arguing about what needs to go where. If we had the infrastructure plan, which exists nationally, with a new agricultural land use plan with the environment and energy, and if we put it all together into a national spatial strategy, that would be exceptionally helpful at guiding development for the most sustainable locations. Last, but not least, I did mention community earlier. We think having mandatory hybrid planning committees is going to be genuinely important for ensuring that the community can actively engage in this growth agenda through a fast changing period. Some councils do it very well, but not all do it, and ensuring that anybody can access a planning committee, regardless of whether they are physical or not.

How do you define a hybrid planning committee?

Being able to join down the line as in person, which is currently not a requirement. They may not be specific to nature and biodiversity, but they help significantly in all of those aspects.

Yes. Anything, Mr Kite?

I will try not to repeat things that have been said previously. Obviously, the front loading of environmental survey and assessment that I have mentioned is one of the key things. The land use framework, and what Dr Hill was alluding to, trying to prevent the siloed thinking between the objectives of different Government Departments. For example, you are not paying one person to deforest land and then another person to create biodiversity benefits or whatever. A lot of money is spent on directly contradictory objectives that a land use framework and the Planning and Infrastructure Bill can do a lot to reconcile. I would also say that there is still a lot more that can be done to use development as a driving force for nature recovery, whether that is in green belt. A lot of the greenbelt is biodiversity-poor. It is sterile. It is intensively farmed land. If you are going to identify green belt sites and bring them forward, why not use that as an opportunity to fund restoration of the natural environment and then also give people access to that so that you get the health and wellbeing benefits that then have knock on effects for the NHS, and so on? Those are the sorts of things I think need to be thought about.

Again, I will not repeat, but I think that statutory consultees and infrastructure providers should be obliged to respond within a prescribed timescale during the planning process to give certainty over timescales. I think we also need to go over and above, just looking at the new homes, and we need to be incentivising reuse, conversion and repurposing of our existing building stock.

These might be quite quick questions. First, to Mr Kite, what are your members telling you about the capacity and capability of local planners and ecologists to process housing applications?

The information was probably well covered by Ms Postlethwaite. In summary, a recent survey has been done for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, which showed that there were significant gaps in ecological capacity in local authorities. That is the reason for the Green Jobs for Nature programme to try to fill that capacity.

A question for Ms Neal: are building surveyors finding local planning authorities will not be able to cope with a significant increase in planning applications?

It is important to recognise that surveying is a very broad spectrum. It is not just about building surveyors. It is about planning surveyors and environmental surveyors and also those who are advising, for example, on the development consultancy and advice side of matters. I think that there is a delay in getting the interaction that we would like through the planning process in order to be able to deliver what is being asked, in terms of the quality of the stock as well. Regulations are just building regulations and the minimum standards required are just as important as going through the actual planning process itself in delivering the homes and the stock that we need. We need stock condition surveys, which is something that we are advocating for at RICS, particularly around social housing so that we can assess the stock that we have now and look at what can be repurposed and reutilised from the existing stock in addition to going through for new housing development.

We heard earlier that there is, in some areas, a shortage of the relevant skills and that is hampering the smooth running of the development process, and it is also creating a development time lag. Can each of you briefly tell us what your organisations are doing to attract school leavers into the profession and is there anything the Government can do to help attract young people into the careers of the future that we are going to need? We will start with Ben.

Sure. I went through a few bullet points of the things that CIEEM is doing to attract more people into the profession, particularly school leavers, such as finding non-degree routes into the profession, for example. We are also a very white profession. We are not a very diverse profession. You have heard about neurodiversity, and we need to do better on those fronts. I will share the briefing paper that we produced for the Minister of Nature. The Government can obviously support all of those things. I also think there needs to be—in terms of statements and emerging policy from the Government concerning the natural environment—a much more positive way of framing the interaction of natural environment professionals with the delivery of planning proposals. Ultimately, CIEEM’s members are working as hard as they can to deliver environmentally sustainable development and that needs more support.

Thank you. Yes, I agree. Thank you. Dr Hills?

Thank you. We are asking the Government for a skills and resource strategy to address the deficit as part of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. It is very much no stone unturned. There are a number of things that we are doing. There are schemes working with the Local Government Association on the pathways to planning. Working with public practice bringing new people in. We have recently launched with the British Chamber of Commerce a new planning scholarship to bring in a swathe of people who would not ordinarily be able to go to university or work in local government, and that is working with funding partner Aviva. We are doing everything we can including launching a level seven apprenticeship back in 2019. Our number one ask for the Department for Education is to provide an exemption of the Chartered Town Planner Apprenticeship to the proposed changes to the level sevens. The reason we are seeking an exemption—and we completely understand why changes need to be made—for the record, in the region of 70% to 80% of our Chartered Town Planner apprentices are currently in local government currently. Every single chief planning officer I speak to tells me that if that apprenticeship levy goes, they will not be replacing them. This is causing local government, ourselves and the university sector extreme concern that that pipeline of students could be turned off if we don’t get that exemption to the level seven Town Planner Apprenticeship. Above everything else, that is our current burning platform, and we are seeking urgent clarity from the Department for Education that it does not turn the tap off at this particular moment in time. Thank you for the question.

We are advocating strongly for a built environment GCSC to encourage younger members of the community to understand the roles that are within the land and built environments and that we get the support of the Government to implement that. While we are doing a huge amount with Next Generation—and we would support the apprenticeship routes into the profession—we are also looking at sponsorship. We have collaboration across many groups to try to show diversity and create that view of role models to encourage people in. It is not just about the next generation; we need to retain the talent that we already have and encourage those in the mid-level of their careers—who possibly have caring responsibilities or children or other responsibilities that they need to address—to come back into the industry and support. We will lose a lot of the insight and knowledge that is there if we have an aging demographic within our membership and we need to encourage the transfer of that information and those skills.

Thank you very much and thank you all for coming in today.

Thank you very much. The final question is for you, Dr Hills. We have heard a lot from the Government about the role of planning. Do you feel that there has been an implicit suggestion in that that your members are blockers, preventing the houses that we need in this country from being built? Could you tell us, first, if you feel that implications were made and what your message to the Government would be on behalf of your members?

Our message—and the Government know this well—is that our members work within the system set by Government. They do not make the rules for development; Government makes the rules for development. Our members are very happy to work within those rules. Indeed, they are all professionally qualified to do so and they are there to ensure that the very important business of development is undertaken in an open, transparent and fair way within the existing system. Our overarching message to the UK Government—and I should say that we work across the nations here—is that our members stand ready to deliver but they need resourcing, certainty and clarity. Yes, there are going to be changes. Yes, there are a lot of consultations on those changes at the moment, but if we carry on making changes it provides levels of uncertainty and fewer reasons for finishing off a local plan or, indeed, starting it. We want resourcing of the sector. We want the shopping list of things that I have mentioned already, in terms of status. Members absolutely stand ready to deliver on planning. Of course, we do not accept that our members are blocking any development. They are merely implementing a system that has been designed for them to implement. Planning is absolutely essential to deliver the Government’s growth agenda. We have heard loud and clear—certainly from the Chancellor of the Exchequer in her maiden speech on day three of the Government—that planning is essential. We are ready to help deliver, but it has to be resourced. We accept that it is financially difficult to do that, so ring fence the funding. Let planning fund itself. Let us resource the sector properly and I think we can get on and deliver great things.

Great. Thank you very much, all of you. Mr Kite, Dr Hills and Ms Neal, thank you for the evidence we have heard.