ACAN remains deeply concerned about the lack of expert consultation carried out on Part 3 of the Planning & Infrastructure Bill. The minor amendments tabled so far remain vastly insufficient to maintain current environmental safeguards, risking widespread ecological degradation to local communities and biodiversity – see our public statement here.

How can you help?

Email your MP to demand they speak up against the speed of passing this bill and put a pause to Part 3 until sufficient expert analysis has been carried out.

– Email your MP here
– See below for key concerns you may like to highlight
– Or see here for a template email you could use: Google Doc / PDF

Our key concerns include:

If Part 3 is allowed to pass into law unamended, we believe it would:

  • Weaken and remove core environmental safeguards without a proven alternative.
  • Replace enforceable protections with loose “Environmental Delivery Plans” and an untested “Nature Restoration Levy”, allowing developers to offset damage rather than prevent it.
  • Strip power from Defra, environmental organisations and local communities, placing decision-making in the hands of the Ministry for Housing, compromising the independence of environmental oversight.
  • Introduce a conflict of interest where Natural England both manages “Environmental Delivery Plans” and assesses their impact with insufficient resources.
  • Add costs, delays and complexity to the planning system through conflicting and overlapping laws, draining local planning authority resources.
  • Fail to provide clarity of policy or process, therefore failing to speed up construction delivery programmes.

We are asking MPs to:

  1. Pause passage of part 3 of the bill so it can undergo further consultation.
  2. Retain and strengthen current environmental protections until fully tested and robust improvements are found.
  3. Omit the offsetting mechanism that allows for the buying out of nature obligations – rushed amendments that retain priority for profit over nature recovery cannot achieve a “win-win” outcome.
  4. Amend the bill to prioritise social justice, climate resilience and ecological restoration.

The ACAN Ecology working group are also busy campaigning directly to the Environmental Audit Committee, the House of Lords, the RIBA and others, alongside sharing resources to keep ourselves up to date.

Please join our Whatsapp group and get involved!