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England is on the verge of swapping a simple, proven rule for protecting nature, the mitigation hierarchy or in plain English, to avoid harm first, reduce what you can’t avoid, and compensate only as a last resort.
Swapping this proven system for a pay-and-proceed model wrapped in Environmental Delivery Plans and new levies. We are about to allow our natural environment to be burnt to the ground.
That change doesn’t just risk habitats; it creates uncertainty that will rattle small businesses that do the real work on the ground like mine.
Here’s the problem in plain English.
When you replace a clear, site-level duty to avoid harm with discretionary plans and variable charges, nature becomes a bargaining chip.
Developers and their advisors won’t know where they stand until late in the process.
SMEs will freeze hiring, postpone investment, and some will let people go while they try to price the new risks.
This isn’t speed; it’s paralysis. We are already seeing fear in the sector.
It’s also bad planning. The mitigation hierarchy gives everyone predictability: avoid, minimise, then compensate. Move that certainty into a central pot and promise to fix things later, and you invite delays, disputes, and public mistrust when the promised “later” doesn’t arrive on site.
There is a better way.
Keep the mitigation hierarchy front and centre in law. Use strategic tools and levies for the diffuse, hard-to-solve pressures like nutrients and water quality, but do not make irreplaceable habitats and sensitive species subject to deal-making.
Give builders and consultants a solid rulebook so projects can advance without trashing what makes England worth living in.
I have worked in the sector since I left school and became a countryside ranger, I don’t ever remember a threat like this.
IMHO, CIEEM and the wider sector have a communications gap to close.
Letters to MPs won’t cut through.
Why not commission a two minute film that shows, in human terms, what’s at stake: living hedgerows going quiet, chalk streams dimming, small firms shelving job ads because the rules just got fuzzy.
We need to hammer emotion here —emotion gets people to move and take action, NOT letters to MPs. When has that ever worked?
End with a clear ask to Peers: Fix Part 3 or scrap it and keep “avoid, reduce, compensate” where it belongs.
If you run an SME in planning, ecology, or construction, this matters to your cash flow as much as it matters to wildlife. We are going to see job losses, mark my words.
The real blockers to development are not newts, bats and badgers. But certainty, confidence, cash and underfunded local planning authorities.
Please share this, tag your professional bodies and ask Peers to hard-wire the mitigation hierarchy back into the Bill. Nature needs certainty.
So do the people building our homes. This S*** show helps no one.
First Published on LinkedIn in November 2025: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/political-football-nature-brink-matt-harmsworth-deyde/