In introducing Amendment 209, I am grateful for the support of the noble Baronesses, Lady Young of Old Scone and Lady Boycott, and my colleague and noble friend Lord Teverson, who have added their names to it.
I very much welcome the Government’s introduction of the local nature recovery strategies—I see them as a really critical tool in capturing the value of the natural environment and ensuring that local communities can have their priorities reflected. But as they stand, the problem is that local authorities only have to “have regard to” the local nature recovery strategies; they do not have to act in accordance with them. My amendment seeks to reverse that, so that all the good work done by local authorities in producing them can be utilised, ensuring that they can be effectively integrated with other local plans and programmes.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, just highlighted, the biodiversity net gain and the other biodiversity requirements put on local councils, including the local nature recovery strategies, will be incredibly resource intensive. These new local nature recovery strategies will be data-driven, map-based and about identifying protected sites and other areas that make a real contribution towards delivering environmental and biodiversity aims. They will require a lot of conversations and consultations with relevant stakeholders—landowners, farmers, local people and businesses—and we want to make sure that all that consultation, of working locally on the ground to identify sites that are important to people and that people feel need protecting, is valued and respected.
Once these strategies have been developed, they will then be able to link up all the various other things such as biodiversity net gain, the environmental land management schemes and the nature for climate fund. They will be a really important tool for bringing all of these together. But if the local authorities and other bodies do not have to act in accordance with them, all that good work of consultation, and all the resources put into them, will go to waste.
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I cite one example which has already been referred to by other Members in previous debates in Committee: the Knepp estate in Sussex, which the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, has mentioned. I feel well equipped and confident in mentioning this as it is in Horsham district. I grew up in Horsham and was a councillor on Horsham District Council for eight years in my twenties.
Knepp is threatened by 3,500 houses on the north-east corner of the site. Horsham District Council is scrabbling around desperately trying to find homes in an area where there are almost no brownfield sites and it looks very likely that this week the housing development on
the corner of the Knepp estate will be included in the local plan to satisfy the housing targets imposed by central government.
Knepp is a core site for nature recovery and I do not really need to tell this to the Minister; he is probably more familiar with the acreage than I am. I understand that Natural England even wanted Knepp to be a national nature reserve, which shows just how nationally significant it is. Not only is it really important in the locality for nature protection, it is a nationally significant nature site.
If local nature recovery strategies were in place already, Knepp would be one of those core sites in Horsham District Council’s nature recovery network. Indeed, Horsham District Council has a draft nature recovery strategy, and Knepp is mentioned within that document. If we already had the strategies and my amendment was accepted, Knepp would have the protection it needs both locally to support the environmental objectives of the local people in Horsham and nationally, which has been recognised by Natural England. That is a really useful and relevant example of why my amendment matters. As I said, I think that Horsham District Council is going to make the decision about its housing allocations tomorrow, and the Knepp site is very likely to be included.
It is not just the Knepp example I want to refer to. When I spoke to my own council—Waverley in Surrey—about my proposal, it felt very strongly that local nature recovery strategies should be made a material consideration in local development planning. One of the other recommendations in the report of the Environmental Audit Committee that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, cited, was that local nature recovery strategies should be made a material consideration in the planning system and should be used as the spatial planning tool to join up biodiversity net gain, ELMS and the planning system, as I identified at the beginning.
This amendment was introduced by my colleague Sarah Olney MP down the other end and, in responding, the Minister there said that an amendment
“would risk limiting the decision-making direction of public authorities with regard to local nature recovery strategies.”
How? It is their strategies that they are drawing up. The Minister then went on to say:
“It would be unreasonable for national bodies such as Network Rail or Highways England to be required to comply with many strategies.”
Why? Again, this is what Natural England and others concerned about embedding the environment in the strategies and planning for these critical bodies have been calling for for some considerable time. Finally, she said that
“this amendment could, perversely, result in lower environmental ambition.” —[Official Report, Commons, 26/5/21; col. 430.]
She gave no example about how this could possibly be true. I think that all those reasons are, frankly, unconvincing and if the Minister tries to use those this evening, I think he will find that this Committee will laugh him out of court.
This is an important amendment, and I am not saying that because I am bringing it forward. If we want to deliver what the Government want, which is to make these fantastic new local nature recovery strategies have the bite they need and to bring in
all the various players—landowners, farmers and local communities—then local authorities have to have regard to them. Otherwise it is a complete waste of time and, not only that, it will alienate the public, who will believe that these things are going to help them protect their environment, and there will be a whopping political backlash.