The government’s leading environmental adviser has said ministers are wrong to suggest nature is blocking development.
Tony Juniper, the chair of Natural England, is to oversee a national nature restoration fund, paid into by developers, which will enable builders to sidestep environmental obligations at a particular site – even if it is a landscape protected for its wildlife.
Central to Labour’s growth plan, the controversial planning and infrastructure bill cuts environmental regulations to fast-track the construction of 1.5m homes by the end of this parliament, according to three legal opinions.
The Guardian revealed this week that more than 5,000 of the most sensitive and protected habitats in England are at risk of destruction because their protections will be weakened.
Both the prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, have said publicly that they want to tear up red tape that allows nature – bats, newts and other wildlife – to be a blocker to development.
But Juniper, in an interview with the Guardian, said such claims coming out of central government were “not necessarily fully backed by evidence”.
Juniper, who has been reappointed for an unprecedented third term at Natural England, the government’s nature agency, said he had not spoken to either the prime minister or he chancellor about the new planning bill.
He said he and his team were working behind the scenes to ensure the law came with the required “guardrails” to ensure Britain met its legally binding targets for nature recovery.
Juniper, an influential environmentalist who is a confidant of King Charles, insisted that “nature underpins growth, so we’ve got to grow nature in order to get economic growth”.
Asked if Starmer and Reeves understood that, Juniper said: “I haven’t spoken to them, so I don’t know, but there’s a very strong evidence base that says that this is the reality. I report to the secretary of state for the environment [Steve Reed] and he very much does get it.”
Critics of the bill have questioned the conflict of interest in giving Natural England new funds from developers while expecting the body to regulate their actions but Juniper said: “That really isn’t the culture of the organisation. I’ve never come across any example in Natural England where we’re looking at securing more money because it will help Natural England.”
But that could change if a future populist government appointed a housebuilder as chair of Natural England. Juniper said such dangers emphasised the importance of long-term legislation such as the Climate Change Act and ensuring “the baton of nature recovery gets carried across not only years but decades”.
“I’m sure the same kind of things will be raised in relation to the planning and infrastructure bill to make sure that we’ve got certainty for the long term.”
Asked if he is happy with the bill in its current form, Juniper said: “We’ve got our specialists who are working with government to be able to get it as good as it can be in terms of the detail as well as the broad ambition, which we very much support. Parliament will scrutinise all of that. Ministers will make decisions about what they believe are the best choices and we’ll see where we finish up.”
Juniper outlined his view that neither nature nor Natural England are a “blocker” on economic growth, but an essential precondition for a thriving economy, at Trumpington Meadows on the edge of his home city of Cambridge.
The housing estate was built on green belt, but arable fields were turned into wildflower meadows, which are now a nature reserve where garden warblers sing and grass snakes hide – a store for flood water and carbon, which is also enjoyed by local people.
“It’s led to a really good outcome where you can see nature recovery linked to a housing development obviously not only of great benefit to the wildlife but also to the people who live here,” said Juniper, who arrived at the estate on his battered bicycle. “Rather than just being constantly in tension – ‘do we do development or do we have nature?’ – we need more of both and this is the kind of approach that can deliver more of both.”
Juniper was first appointed to Natural England in 2019 by the then environment secretary, Michael Gove, and has overseen major nature-positive measures in England including landscape recovery schemes on farmland, biodiversity net gain for new housing and a new “King’s series” of national nature reserves.
Research examining more than 17,000 planning appeals made last year found that newts or bats featured in just 3.3%. “Natural England is held up as a blocker to development not necessarily by government but in the newspapers sometimes and amongst some of the development community, but if you look at the reality of the position we object to fewer than 1% of planning applications every year,” he said.
Under the planning bill, the nature restoration fund will give Natural England vital new resources. When Juniper was appointed, the agency was suffering from deep cuts after a decade of austerity and one staffer asked him: “Have you been brought in to close us down?” Since then, Juniper has reinvigorated the agency, tripling its budget, but has had to make job cuts this year after a funding freeze – a real-terms cut.
Juniper argues the nature restoration fund will enable Natural England “to take a large-scale view of the landscape, not just the nature that’s affected where the houses have been built, but to look at the effects on the wider environment, including protected areas that might be quite far away”. He said they had sought this approach to tackle “landscape pressures” such as river pollution and too many nutrients in sensitive meadows and wetlands “for years”.
“Moving to much more strategic approaches whereby we can get our arms around these bigger landscape pressures, that’s key,” he said. “This represents a real opportunity but the detail has to be right including having a high level of certainty about will it work, a high level of ambition about what’s aiming to be achieved and some sense that the resources will be available.”
Doubts have also been cast on nature mitigation being carried out after a housing estate has been built, given that a study last year found that just 53% of nature mitigation measures obliged by planning permissions such as new trees, hedges and bird boxes actually appeared on new housing estates. “Having the right kinds of safeguards is going to be important,” said Juniper.
Juniper’s latest book, Just Earth, argues that tackling the biodiversity crisis is completely connected with reducing human inequalities. “People on low incomes are the ones who tend to suffer the worst effects of environmental decline whether it’s access to green space, air pollution or a poor diet,” he said.
“One of the most fundamental challenges faced for nature recovery in this country and pretty much everywhere is this ongoing misperception that there is a choice between recovering nature and growing the economy and improving conditions for people.
“Nature is often seen as hostile to that and it could not be further from the truth. The more we improve the environment, the more this can help to lessen some of these ongoing inequalities.”
