“The great divide between town and country is set to become wider”
As the new UK government settles into office, Commercial Property Specialist, Denise Bull, is intrigued to see how it will balance the demands for economic growth, building and biodiversity legislation.
On the 9th November 2021, the Environment Act became law, further adding to and refining the legal framework to ensure the protection of the environment. For property developers and construction projects it became necessary to hire an ecology consultant to assess land and identify potential issues surrounding nature and wildlife on their development sites.
Requirements for reports with recommendations ranging from planting trees and relocating Great Crested Newt habitats, to the use of ‘Bat Boxes’ and mitigating the effect of nitrates on development sites, became an integral part of the planning process under conditions introduced into the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. The requirement to provide a net increase in biodiversity on a development site was also introduced by the EA 2021 and these regulations fully came into force in April of this year.
While the natural world and ecosystem was, quite rightly, made a priority, a substantial industry has grown up with increasing influence across the property sector as the financial rewards for those owning land which could provide these sought-after habitats proved to be too tempting to pass up. Also there does seem to be an interesting collection of exceptions to the rules, including Crown Estate Developments, the construction of HS2 and extensions to stately homes (essentially the laws always applied, except when they didn’t.)
One of the possibly unforeseen consequences of the Environment Act 2021 is to effectively add to the cost of redevelopment as developers are forced to find extra space for nature within their developments or buy BNG credits on land elsewhere. Born of a stated desire to improve the environment, the unfortunate reality of these regulations is often to push the creation of biodiversity havens far away from the urban areas they were designed to protect and onto land that is not freely available for the general public to enjoy.
There are also unfortunate effects of the interplay with other regulations. For those owning buildings that have been unable to be let, the removal of the right for owners to claim Empty Property Rates after six months has led to many owners seeking to demolish these properties to avoid paying rates on an unoccupied building.
A demolition site tends to attract wildlife and growth often in an unplanned uncontrolled way. When the buildings and people move out, nature tends to move in and while this might seem like free re-wilding, often this uncontrolled growth has a detrimental effect if and when the property is eventually made available for new development. The obvious issue for the developer is how do they increase the biodiversity of a site where nature has taken over without the costs of doing so making the development unprofitable?
The whole initiative has been admirable, but lacked foresight and now the government has a dilemma on its hands. It needs to accelerate building of both residential and commercial property for homes, industry and promised growth the country desperately needs while balancing the costs to developers of compliance with the raft of regulations designed to protect the environment. Re-using so called brownfield sites ought to be the aim, but in most cases these sites will be more problematic and costly to develop leading to increased pressure on our jealously guarded green belt.
So, will there be more ‘exceptions’ to the Environment Act that will outrage ecologists and environmentalists as they lose work and feel their cause has been put in reverse? Will so called brownfield sites continue to be overlooked in favour of possibly simpler to develop greenfield land? I can feel Nimbys sharpening their pencils as I write, and I fear for the direction of travel. The great divide between town and country is set to become wider.
