La presidente dell’Inghilterra naturale rifiuta i ministri dell’affermazione secondo cui la natura blocca lo sviluppo

I mean, it blocks terrible development yes. 

I appreciate we desperately need housing. But speaking as someone who deals with planning; just because we need housing doesn’t mean the housing has to be garbage.

So many of our new estates are just ugly, cramped and make absolutely no room for nature. Not because they can’t, but because it’s cheaper to just slap big open areas of grass down, stick everything in pipes, bomb craters for ponds etc. 

Why is it that countries with far greater space constraints than us, can build high density accommodation that is nice, with space and nature all combined. Yet we are stuck with ugly, cluttered Bellway and Persimmon estates that look like crap and don’t even give us the housing we need? 

I see in classic news fashion the more nuanced point actually being made by Tony of “not necessarily fully backed by evidence” has been turned into the headline that the “chair REJECTS ministers claims”

Tony Juniper seems like a good lad, I’m glad hes in charge of Natural England, the body that under the new legislation will be the one issuing Environmental Delivery Plans. EDPs being explicitly required in order for developers to avoid mitigations and pay into the Nature Restoration Fund.

Sidenote:

“which will enable builders to sidestep environmental obligations at a particular site – even if it is a landscape protected for its wildlife.”

This is such an disingenuous line from the guardian. builders can only sidestep environmental obligations if Natural England allows them too. All this legislation does is stop endless blocking of development by NIMBYs using environmental law. Natural England can still evaluate cases to determine whether or not the landscape theyre impacting needs protecting.