My Lords, I start by wishing the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, a speedy recovery, and I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Parminter and Lady Willis, and others, for bringing forward these amendments. There is a lot of unity in this Chamber regarding what we are seeking to achieve here, and I have listened with great interest to the debate.
On the last point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, this is an attempt to hard-wire nature into our planning system. Many will argue that it already is, but as has been pointed out by many others, nature continues to be depleted. Species decline is now a serious crisis. As the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, pointed out, this is not just an environmental crisis but an economic one, as the Dasgupta review so vitally illustrated.
Amendments 184ZA and 242I in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, provide a revision of the prior amendment, Amendment 184, to set out the relationship between local nature recovery strategies and development plans, to ensure that local nature recovery strategies’ objectives are reflected in development plans. These amendments would require that the Secretary of State’s guidance on how to have regard to local nature recovery strategies must include information on the degree of compliance with them.
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Of course I recognise the vital importance of nature and the role that the planning system plays in nature recovery. Local nature recovery strategies will deliver more co-ordinated, practical and focused action to help nature. The noble Baroness, Lady Willis, talked about the fragmentation of nature. Her expertise is much greater than mine, but it is joined by the words she used—
“bigger, better and joined up”—
from the fundamental review of our nature sites by Sir John Lawton over a decade ago. If she looks across the array of government policy, she will see that the desire for a more joined-up approach to our nature sites is fundamental to environmental land management and all the other measures we seek to introduce, and, of course, in this.
I hope I can reassure the noble Baroness with the guidelines published last week. Paragraph 44 is not just about habitats. It says:
“Responsible authorities, with Natural England’s support, should seek to … identify the existing or potential habitats considered to be either locally or nationally important and the practicality of improving existing areas’ condition, or creating new areas of these habitats”,
and
“identify the existing or potential species (or groups of species) in the area that the strategy could make a particular contribution to enhancing or recovering, and assess the practicality of creating or enhancing habitats to support this.”
Other noble Lords have mentioned that guidance. I just add this line, not with my tongue in my cheek, because this is really important. Paragraph 94 says:
“They should write and present the statement in plain English.”
This is something that has to be understood not just by planning officers and people who work for NGOs but by farmers, land managers, and anybody who has some say in what is happening to the local environment around where they live. The basis of transparency and clarity should be fundamental to them.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, for his assistance in helping to develop this concept through the pilot project he spoke about in Cornwall and the Scillies. I agree entirely that this is a vital next step in our collective ambition to achieve our targets and, more importantly, as a generation to hand on our natural environment in a better condition than how we found it.
The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, talked about biodiversity net gain. The scheme that she talked about does not reflect how biodiversity net gain is defined in the Environment Act because that will not come into play until November. We are now working this up. It is not necessarily about the developer having to buy land; it can be insetting changes into the development, but also accepting that the vast majority of biodiversity lost through development will not be able to be replaced within the development. That is where the credits trading system comes into play. A good, high-integrity marketplace for biodiversity credits is fundamental to the success of a biodiversity net-gain scheme.
To add to the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, I say that the local nature recovery strategy guidelines laid last week create a requirement for all local nature recovery strategies to be agreed by the local planning authorities that the strategy covers, so they need to have regard to something that they have helped create. That will create a new sense of partnership and a balance that will be effective.
Our intention is that responsible authorities will be required to work collaboratively with local organisations, with input encouraged from across the public, private and voluntary sectors to establish shared proposals for what action should be taken and where. I can confirm—as has been said—that, last Thursday, the Government published the regulations and statutory guidance needed to enable the preparation of local nature recovery strategies to begin across England. As committed to during the passage of the Environment Act, the Government will publish guidance on how local planning authorities should consider local nature recovery strategies in plan-making, and this will be published this summer.
Local authorities are also required to publish biodiversity reports, with the first report due before 1 January 2026. Our guidance for this duty will make clear that the reports should include information as to how authorities have had regard to local nature recovery strategies. I assure my noble friend Lady McIntosh that the “new burdens” doctrine will be applied, as has been said, by Natural England, and support for local authorities will be fundamental.
The Government are still of the view that the details of the relationship between local nature recovery strategies and the planning system should be a matter for guidance; however, I thank noble Lords for identifying
key considerations for that guidance. For instance, we want all components of local nature recovery strategies to be given full consideration during plan-making, including the maps that will set out both the most valuable existing areas for nature and specific proposals for creating or improving those habitats—precisely the points made by the noble Baroness.
At the same time, there are reasons to avoid a completely binding relationship between local nature recovery strategies and development plans, as plan-making will need to consider all the issues facing the local area and community, tested through rigorous requirements for consultation and examination. It is conceivable that in some cases the plan-making process may conclude that an aspect of a local nature recovery strategy needs to be addressed in a different way, so a degree of flexibility is desirable to allow for that.
With that being said, while I understand the intention behind this amendment and fully support the important role that local nature recovery strategies will play, this is not an amendment that we feel able to support. I will reflect on the debate and we will consider these matters further, but I hope that I have said enough to enable noble Lords not to press their amendment at this stage.