In the space of a few months, Ministers have bulldozed through new Planning legislation, signalled their intent to scale back Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG), dilute the Habitats Regulations, and pause support for nature-friendly farming.
Taken together, these moves are not minor adjustments – they are a full-scale retreat from the promises the Government was elected on, and an attack on the very thing that underpins our economy – nature.
Following the passage of the damaging Planning & Infrastructure Bill, the Government now appears poised, as early as next week, to abandon its election pledge that development would promote nature recovery – by effectively gutting Biodiversity Net Gain, the policy designed to ensure development gives back more than it takes from nature.
And the threats keep coming. The farming minister has signalled that nature-friendly farming measures within Environmental Land Management schemes (ELMs) may be rolled back. And the Government appears ready to dilute the Habitats Regulations – the cornerstone laws protecting Britain’s most valuable and internationally significant wildlife sites.
This follows the Prime Minister’s enthusiastic support for proposals in the Fingleton Review to bypass environmental safeguards in the name of speeding up nuclear development – so much so that he intends to apply this deregulatory approach across the entire industrial strategy.
What does this mean for us in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight?
The combined impact of the Planning & Infrastructure Bill, exemptions to BNG, and proposals to bypass the Habitats Regulations across major industries would place unacceptable risks on our protected sites, weakening the safeguards they rely on, as well as sharply reducing demand for key mechanisms we use to restore nature.
BNG and Nutrient Neutrality (NN) are essential tools for restoring landscapes, improving water quality and allowing development to proceed in a responsible way. Used well, they stimulate local innovation and attract investment into nature-based solutions – and the Trust has been leading much of this work across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.
Our projects at Wilder Duxmore and Wilder Nunwell, together with wider Solent nutrient-mitigation schemes, are already reducing pollution and creating much-needed habitat. BNG funding is enabling us to restore wetlands, grasslands and woodlands that benefit both wildlife and local communities.
However, is it critical to note that this progress has been achieved while protecting existing high-value nature sites. Nature recovery depends on both: safeguarding the best of what remains and creating additional high-quality habitat, linking these to create the bigger, better, more joined up network envisioned in the Lawton Report – which is where nature-friendly farming also comes in.
What we cannot do is accept a model where irreplaceable wildlife sites are traded away for poorer substitutes elsewhere, or where landowners are not incentivised to do the right thing for nature.
Yet that is precisely the direction these policy changes point towards. They shift focus away from protecting the most important wildlife sites, replacing genuine safeguards with cash-for-damage compensation.
And by moving decisions and implementation into a national, centralised system, Government risks crushing local markets, stifling innovation, and pushing mitigation to the cheapest land available – not to the places where environmental pressures are most acute. The result is poorer outcomes for nature, weaker local delivery, and a widening gap in the very network we are trying to restore.
This will hit Hampshire and the Isle of Wight hard. We are already facing acute environmental pressures, climate impacts, pressures on freshwater and marine ecosystems and further fragmentation of habitats in the rush to ‘build, baby, build’.
If the Government presses ahead, the potential consequences for us will be profound:
- Investment in habitat creation will evaporate as demand for BNG is wiped out.
- Successful locally run nutrient reduction projects could be centralised, undermining innovation and delivery.
- Protected sites will be under threat, and pressure on places like the New Forest, chalk rivers and coastal wetlands will intensify.
- Nature-friendly farmers will be left stranded.
- Communities will lose natural flood defences and cleaner water.
- People will lose the chance to see nature recover, at precisely the moment when public desire for wilder, greener places has never been stronger.
Risks to the Economy
Beneath all these individual policy changes lies a deeper and far more dangerous misconception – that deregulating environmental protection is necessary to drive growth. The Government continues to behave as if nature is an optional extra – a constraint that stands in the way, rather than the foundation on which our entire economy depends.
Here’s the simple truth the growth-at-any-cost mindset refuses to grasp: Britain’s prosperity is built on functioning natural systems. Remove those, and the economy will eventually fail.
Pollinators, floodplains, clean water, fertile soils, a stable climate and a healthy population aren’t environmental “nice-to-haves” – they are the essential infrastructure that keeps food on shelves, homes safe from flooding, supply chains running and public services viable.
So when environmental protections are weakened, this is not freeing up business. It is stripping value from the nation’s natural assets, storing up enormous costs for the future.
And those costs always return – as flooded communities, polluted rivers, failed crops, rising insurance premiums and pressure on the NHS. A handful may profit in the short term, but the national loss is paid by everyone else.
At a time when the economy, investment and productivity have all taken a hit since Brexit, choosing now to dismantle the very safeguards that keep our ecosystems functioning is not pragmatic policy. It is economic self-harm.
And watching political leaders blame planning delays on bats, newts or fish is not leadership. It is a distraction from the real structural issues that Government has failed to address.
A country serious about its future invests in its productive base. For Britain, that base is nature. Undermine it, and any promise of prosperity becomes not just hollow, but dangerous.
Labour must change course
People in Hampshire and on the Isle of Wight care deeply about their natural environment. They expect better than a race to the bottom dressed up as growth. They expect the Government to deliver on the promises it made. Indeed, polling by the Wildlife Trusts ahead of the 2024 General Election showed that over a third cast their vote based on the environmental policies offered by candidates.
The recent National Emergency Briefing set out the reality of the issues we face if we don’t tackle the climate and nature emergency urgently. Weakening environmental protections now would be a profound mistake – for nature, for communities, and for economic resilience.
We know that a growing number of Labour backbench MPs are unhappy about this direction of travel, with several already signing their name to an Early Day Motion expressing serious concerns about the recommendations of the Fingleton Review.
The Government would do well to pay attention to the scientists, and, indeed, to their own party and voters.
Help us stand up for nature
At Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust, we stand up for our wildlife and wild places and for the people who treasure them. We do this through protecting the best places for wildlife, challenging damaging proposals, delivering practical solutions, from habitat creation to nutrient reduction, and working with landowners, local authorities, businesses, and communities to create a wilder future.
We need your help. Please join us, support our work and use your voice and call on your MP to urgently challenge the Government and stand up for nature now.
