Environmentalism is at the root of the housing crisis

Labour’s pandering to green quangos shows it’s not remotely serious about building the homes we need

As the UK’s housing crisis reaches a breaking point, Labour prime minister Keir Starmer is under pressure to get building.

Over a year ago, Starmer came out in favour of building on Britain’s hallowed green belt. Since his election, he has promised to build 1.5million new homes over the next five years. Much of these he hopes to put on those bits of the green belt that are not especially green and certainly not pleasant – the vaguely defined and pitifully small ‘grey belt’. That modest plan is part of Labour’s wider commitment to reform England’s arcane and obstructive planning system, so as to accelerate housebuilding.

For her part, deputy prime minister and housing secretary Angela Rayner has said she wants to ‘kickstart’ the economy, ‘unleash’ housebuilding and ‘power local growth’. Labour has also pledged to unblock ‘stalled sites’ in order to build more homes in places like the Liverpool Central Docks, Northstowe, Worcester Parkway and Langley Sutton Coldfield.

Whether or not Labour actually manages to make good on these promises remains to be seen. There is a key barrier to housebuilding, which the government claims it is intent on dismantling – namely, rules around ‘nutrient neutrality’.

Boring though it may sound, understanding nutrient neutrality is vital to understanding our housing crisis. This piece of EU-inspired environmental regulation is severely limiting housebuilding in the UK by forcing developers to satisfy the demands of green quango Natural England. Developers must ensure that waste from a home’s occupants will not harm water quality in habitats where birds and fish are protected species. Builders are also required to protect waterways through ‘nature-based’ methods. All of this must be guaranteed before any foundations are even laid.

Last year, the previous Conservative government attempted to do away with these regulations, led by then Levelling Up secretary Michael Gove. But this was blocked by a coalition of Green, Tory and Labour peers in the House of Lords – a rebellion supported by none other than slippery Starmer himself.

Now, though, Labour appears to want to free the UK from this restrictive policy. Last week, Rayner and environment secretary Steve Reed wrote a letter to various green groups announcing their intent to square the circle of ‘green growth’. They write that, while Labour remains convinced that ‘positive outcomes for nature’ are fundamental to ‘unlock’ the homes and infrastructure Britain urgently needs, it’s clear that the ‘status quo is not working’ and is in need of overhaul.

Reed and Rayner are absolutely right that nutrient neutrality is a massive burden on the UK. The regulations already delay housebuilding in some populous parts of the country, including Tees Valley, large parts of Kent (including Ashford, which is designated as a key growth point), Norfolk (including the city of Norwich) and the Solent – all areas with large numbers of workers.

To rectify this, Labour plans to allow developers to begin work before meeting the nutrient-neutrality requirement. The homes and their construction would still need to meet certain green standards, but there would be more flexibility about mitigating the environmental impact. Developers could, for example, fund the creation of new wetland areas to offset the pollution produced by the homes. However, the houses could only be occupied once such mitigations were in place.

This does not go nearly far enough. As usual, ministers want to have it both ways. The new government is caught between the irresistible force of housing need and the immovable object of the green ‘Blob’. But in this contest, we already know which side will win out. As the joint letter to green NGOs says:

‘Our vision for an improved planning system will require government to work in partnership with civil society, communities and business. Most importantly, we recognise that we are only likely to find the right answer by working closely with you – organisations with longstanding experience of what it takes to improve environmental outcomes on the ground.’

In other words, environmental organisations are going to be able to exert extraordinary influence over what gets built and where. Last year, it was unelected peers who prevented the government from scrapping the nutrient-neutrality rules – a regime that, in 2018, was imposed on the UK by Natural England and the Court of Justice of the European Union. Now it will be green NGOs and quangos who get to hold a veto over housebuilding. From the very beginning, nutrient neutrality has been the project of unelected, unaccountable green bureaucrats.

If Labour wants to get serious about housebuilding, it needs to tear up eco-obsessed, virtue-signalling rules like those around nutrient neutrality. The UK has been tied up in green tape for far too long.

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