Rachel Reeves to cut ‘bats and newts’ in boost to developers

*”Labour ministers have repeatedly insisted that their current planning overhaul will not come at the expense of nature, promising a “win-win” system where developers will pay to offset environmental damage.*

Curious as to how you can pay to offset environmental damage in this context?

It’s always bats. Labour seem to have a particular hatred of bats.

Our planning system definitely needs some changes to it and some of them come across as quite pragmatic.

Bats and newts – I understand this one to mean removing things like the survey in areas where there has never been evidence of bats and newts. The trade off being delayed spotting if migration does occur.

Limiting legal challenges – good! As I understand it, right now you can challenge an unlimited amount of times and your costs are capped (I would also support increasing the cap) and some recognition that the national interest sometimes outweighs person circumstance. For example the village that needed the HS2 tunnel vent in it and they blocked an access track being upgraded.

Nature fund – unsure at this state, I suppose it would boil down to the question of how do you quantify environmental impact? and then how/where does that money get spent?

Performance reviews – I’m not sure that this is anything other than performative. What metrics will they be judged against? Will they actually be resources sufficiently to meet these metrics? Will allowances be made for larger and more complex projects?

For me we need to do something, I think it’s mad that we’ve spent over £1bn on the planning alone before a single spade has been put into the ground. There’s a balance to be had for sure between speed/efficiency and good planning with all the correct checks and balances in place.

This government loves diversity. Just so long as it’s not biodiversity, because apparently that’s not at all important.
Reeves is as thick as they come.