PRE-READ NOTE: If you are reading this article after 27 October 2026, you will have missed the opportunity to respond to Natural England’s consultation on the first draft Environmental Delivery Plan (EDP) for Norfolk. You will not, however, be wasting your time by reading on: many of the misgivings that apply to the Norfolk EDP will be relevant to future EDPs; and feedback to Natural England will still be required for future EDPs, which will also be subject to consultation.
Back in March 2025, Dr Paul Sterry and I co-wrote a blog for Second Nature about Labour’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which at the time was working its way through the Parliamentary pipeline, lubricated by an effluent of anti-nature rhetoric and misinformation emanating from the highest echelons of Government.
We warned about the rather concerning proposals in Part 3 of this Bill to set up a new system of ‘Environmental Delivery Plans’ (EDPs), which (if passed without amendment) would create a system whereby the legal protection afforded to our most important designated nature conservation sites (Special Protection Areas (SPAs) and Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) and Ramsar sites) could be ‘disapplied’, provided that the developers whose projects impacted those sites paid into a fund (the ‘Nature Restoration Fund’ (NRF)). The idea behind this was supposedly that the NRF would then be used to fund positive conservation actions (potentially elsewhere) at scale, provided that those measures were judged by the Secretary of State to provide an ‘overall improvement’ to the same type of environmental features that had been affected. In our previous blog, we highlighted several serious risks for nature conservation in the Bill as it was at the time, and the lack of built-in safeguards.
Following publication of our blog, a Herculean effort was launched by many individuals and organisations in the nature conservation sector to try to have the Bill amended during its passage through Parliament, to remove some of the jeopardy it contained for the natural environment, whilst still leaving the Government with a tool that would enable it to expedite the delivery of infrastructure and housing development. This effort was spurred on by professional analysis of the Bill carried out by the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) and professional bodies like the Chartered Institute for Ecology and Environmental Management (CIEEM), which confirmed the widely held fears of the sector, that the Bill lacked even the minimum safeguards necessary to protect critical natural capital.
These efforts to improve the Bill almost succeeded, as concerned peers in the House of Lords voted to insert several amendments that were designed to reduce the risk of harm to nature. However, following the publication of misleading briefings to its MPs, verbal reassurances from Ministers and the adoption of its own alternative amendments (which are widely agreed to be far from adequate), the Government was ultimately successful in whipping its MPs in the House of Commons to have the Lords’ amendments stripped out. The Planning and Infrastructure Bill subsequently completed its navigation through Parliament and gained Royal Assent in late 2025, becoming the Planning and Infrastructure Act (the ‘PIA’) 2025.
So where are we now?
Well, in December 2025, Marian Spain, the Chair of Natural England, wrote to Emma Reynolds MP, who was at the time the Defra Secretary of State, to notify her that Natural England intended to proceed to write the first 23 EDPs; 16 of which would address harm caused by nutrient pollution in the water of designated sites, and 7 of which would address impacts to populations of Great Crested Newt.
Subsequently, on 17 September 2026, Natural England published its first draft EDP for consultation, which is designed to facilitate the delivery of some 15,780 new homes over 10 years that (if unmitigated) would exacerbate Nitrogen or Phosphorous pollution impacting water quality in the Norfolk: Broads SAC (Yare and Bure), the Broadland Ramsar and the River Wensum SAC, as a result of increased sewage effluent discharge and surface water runoff.
The first point I should make is that, owing to the minimal consultation requirements enshrined in the PIA, interested parties have only 28 working days to make their views on the draft EDP known (the deadline for responses is 9.29am on Tuesday 27 October 2026). I find this in itself disturbing; the main body of the EDP itself is a highly technical document running to some 255 pages, with a further 52 pages of ‘supplementary information’ and a 34 page ‘consultation guide’. How on Earth any community and nature conservation groups affected by this EDP that do not have access to paid professional advice are supposed to read and understand this information in such a short time span, and then produce a meaningful and well thought-through consultation response, is beyond me.
The EDP covers an area that measures some 50km across (either east to west or north to south), across the three catchments of the designated sites in question, encompassing settlements like Norwich itself, and with them hundreds of thousands of people. To give these people so little opportunity to engage with a plan that will have profound effects on their environment seems to me to be remarkably callous.
How about the EDP itself? Is it any good?
Unfortunately, in my view and as things stand, the EDP is what its sceptics feared that it would be, and what the Government reassured us that it would not be.
Let’s start with the ‘headline’ news, which is – somewhat surprisingly – that the EDP does not actually address the problem of forecast increases in nutrient pollution in the affected designated sites.
By its own admission, even if 100% of the ‘conservation measures’ outlined in the EDP are successfully delivered on time (which seems a big assumption to make), there will be what the EDP describes as a ‘very small increase’ in nutrient pollution entering the affected Sites by the 10-year end point of the EDP.
What is meant by this exactly isn’t made clear in the main text of the EDP, but the figures in Annexes 5B and 7B appear to suggest that Natural England is forecasting a net increase of between 270 and 435 Kg of Phosphorous pollution per year to enter the designated sites (apparently conflicting figures are presented at different places in the EDP) and an increase of 7,695 Kg of Nitrogen pollution per year.
Depending on which figures are correct and whether or not double accounting has occurred, these numbers represent somewhere between 29% and 61% of the total Phosphorous pollution from new development going unmitigated, and around 83% of Nitrogen pollution.
These ‘accepted’ increases in pollution remain, despite the EDP itself stating very clearly at para 548, in respect of the open water features of the affected designated sites, that:
“Even small increases in nutrients may risk a waterbody reaching its tipping point and shifting it into an irrecoverable state. Prolonged nutrient increases may cause accumulation within the features’ sediments, thus increasing internal loading within the feature while decreasing its resilience and recovery potential.”
And in respect of the Norfolk Broads in general on pages 119 and 159 that:
“The between year variability [of species abundance data] and low abundances in some broads is indicative of a less resilient system vulnerable to nutrient driven tipping points between macrophyte and algal dominated systems. Condition assessments of four broads in The Bure and one in The Yare in 2009 found all broads failed to meet macrophyte community targets and four showed high levels of algal turbidity. For the Bure and the Yare, noteworthy plant species (Ramsar citation) usually associated with open water features, are noted as generally declining or not present, with nutrient status and hydrological impairment the main pressures in both sub catchments……
Returning the system back to a pre-impact ecological state requires a much larger reduction in nutrients than the increase that created the shift. Therefore, preventing the shift is vital. Tipping points can be unpredictable and unstable, particularly when impacted by multiple stressors, with even small amounts of additional nutrients triggering a shift.
Tipping points are a critical threshold at which a relatively small additional change in environmental conditions causes an ecosystem to shift abruptly into a different state…
…all [of the Broads] are currently impacted by nutrients and other pressures, making them less resilient systems and vulnerable to nutrient driven tipping points, where they are not already more algal dominated systems….”
It should be noted that the EDP currently assesses all of the designated sites as being in ‘red’ conservation status, which it defines as “Deteriorating – Structure and function of habitat or habitat of the species are/is severely degraded. Recovery will require significant intervention over a long timescale”. The reference above to these sites being pushed into an ‘irrecoverable’ state means that their conservation status would be classed as ‘black’, which the EDP defines as: “Structure and function of the habitat or habitat of the species are/is degraded beyond the point of recovery”
Beyond preventing a shift to ‘black’ conservation status, the EDP is clear that it is not merely the prevention of new pollution that is needed to bring about recovery of the affected designated sites, but a dramatic reduction in existing levels of pollution. Page 9 of the EDP states that:
“Both The Broads Special Area of Conservation/Broadland Ramsar and the River Wensum Special Area of Conservation suffer from excess nutrient pollution. Water quality targets are set for freshwater habitats by the Common Standards Monitoring Guidance. To achieve compliance with phosphorus targets, substantial reductions in phosphorus inputs are required. In the Bure Broads and Marshes, reductions in the range of 55% to 97% dependent on location are necessary. For the Yare Broads and Marshes, the required reductions range from 87% to 91%. For the River Wensum to achieve compliance with phosphorus targets, reductions of between 34% and 74% are needed.
Similarly, significant reductions are required to meet nitrogen targets. For the Bure Broads and Marshes, reductions between 62% and 67% are necessary (this range excludes Cockshoot Broad, where the nitrogen target is currently being met). In the Yare Broads and Marshes, nitrogen reductions of between 50% and 83% are required. “
So, in effect, the EDP openly acknowledges the high risks entailed in permitting even small increases in nutrient pollution, and is clear that recovery is only possible if nutrient pollution levels are driven significantly downwards, before then failing to prescribe the measures that would achieve either of these outcomes.
In my view, it is important at this juncture to note that, despite being described as ‘very small’, the increase in nutrient pollution is in my view far from trivial. By the EDP’s own reckoning, the additional Phosphorous that would enter the Broads represents about 5% of the entire target pollutant level for the Broads, and 1.3% of the target level for the River Wensum.
Though not explicitly stated, the EDP appears to be relying on predicted future reductions in background pollution being brought about through other means, by upgrades in wastewater treatment works that are legally mandated to be delivered by 2030 under the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act (LURA). However, the EDP contains no analysis whatsoever of:
- How much additional pollution might be added by new development before 2030 (and whether any ‘peak’ in pollution this might cause beforehand could cause habitat damage);
- How badly the new pollution from EDP development might undermine the benefits of the LURA upgrades;
- Whether any such undermining might prevent the Broads and Wensum from achieving their pollution reduction targets; or
- What other risks might prevent recovery – for example, a worsening in pollution from agricultural sources.
To me, given the acknowledgement that these sites could be pushed over their tipping points by even small increases in pollution, relying solely on future improvements that might fail to be made manifest, and without knowing how badly the EDP development might undermine those improvements, seems like a significant risk to have failed to address.
So, if it doesn’t prevent increases in nutrient pollution, what does the EDP do instead?
The EDP does prescribe some measures that have or will have a quantifiable effect in reducing or preventing nutrient pollution – just not enough to offset the predicted increase from development. Such measures that have been included in the EDP are:
- Planning conditions to secure nutrient export reduction performance standards for developments with non-mains drainage;
- Fen and reedbed creation and restoration (as this takes land out of agricultural production and also has a water filtering/interception function)
- Land use change from intensively managed agricultural land to semi-natural habitat (which causes the cessation of farming related nutrient pollution)
With the exception of the first measure above, the others are classed as ‘compensation’, apparently because there is no expectation in the EDP that they will be delivered before additional pollution is permitted under the EDP (so a worsening before delivery is possible and the best that they might achieve in these circumstances is to enable some form of recovery).
Other measures that would have helped to further reduce nutrient pollution, such as funding and securing changes in farming regimes to less polluting operations, upgrading septic tanks or package treatment plants (PTPs), and creating nutrient interceptor wetlands, have all been discounted as viable options (despite in some cases having favourable appraisals in the EDP), for reasons that appear to me to be questionable or perhaps even spurious.
For example, the notion of paying farmers to commit to transition to less nutrient polluting forms of farming seems to have been rejected on the basis that this would duplicate environmental stewardship funding (it won’t – I am unaware of any environmental stewardship funding that would pay a farmer for a whole-farm transition to a lower nutrient pollution activity, for example from dairying – which produces large quantities of slurry and has a high fertiliser demand – to lower density beef grazing). Including measures to help farmers transition to less polluting operations might have been particularly useful, given that most of the pollution in these sites actually comes from agriculture rather than development. I have heard that opportunities known to the water companies of tackling pollution from private septic tanks and package treatment plants have also not been explored with them, which seems to me to be inexplicable.
Beyond the limited nutrient-reducing measures that are included in the EDP, the other measures that have been proposed to be implemented include:
- Deer management
- Catch-dyke remediation (500m on site or contiguous with the River Yare)
- The removal of 1 weir in the River Wensum
- River habitat restoration (for 1km of the River Wensum)
- Hydrological restoration measures (for the River Yare)
- Positive management of fen-type habitats
All of the above measures are also classed as ‘compensation’ (i.e. they provide alternative benefits to offset harm – they do not seek to directly avoid or reduce harm from nutrient pollution).
While the above measures may indeed be positive ecologically and act to address some of the other negative ‘influences’ affecting important habitats of the designated sites, they will do nothing quantifiable to reduce levels of nutrient pollution, and may even make that situation worse (as grazing animals like deer, for all the ecological harm they do when over-populated, can lead to measurable nutrient-reducing effects through grazing and browsing to remove biomass from an ecosystem).
The basis for the inclusion of the above conservation measures in the EDP (i.e. those that will not act to reduce pollution) seems to me to stem from the guidance that the Government published on 17 September 2026, which directs Natural England on how to interpret the ‘overall improvement test’ (OIT) that the EDP must pass.
In my view, this guidance seems to materially alter and undermine the requirements of even the low bar set for the OIT by the PIA.
Section 61(3) of the PIA requires an EDP to set out the conservation measures to be taken:
“…in order to (a) address the environmental impact of development on the identified environmental feature, and (b) contribute to an overall improvement in the conservation status” of the affected environmental feature(s)”
The environmental impact of the development addressed by this EDP is nutrient pollution, which is plainly left incompletely addressed by the conservation measures in the EDP.
The Government’s OIT guidance instead seeks to frame the OIT as merely a balancing act, in which positive actions are simply weighed subjectively against the negative effects of development in a conceptual set of ‘scales’, so that “…the projected impact of conservation measures that will happen if they are required must be such that it will maintain a favourable balance against the projected impact of the maximum level of development…”.
In my view, this approach is flawed for multiple reasons.
Firstly (and somewhat ironically given that the Habitats Regulations are ‘disapplied’ by EDPs), I suspect that the origin of the Government’s approach to the OIT actually represents a misapplication of a concept borrowed from Article 1 of the Habitats Directive. This defines the ‘conservation status’ of a habitat as:
“….the sum of the influences acting on a natural habitat and its typical species that may affect its long-term natural distribution, structure and functions as well as the long-term survival of its typical species…”
At a glance, there might seem to be some alignment between the above extract from the Habitats Directive, and the Government’s approach to interpreting the OIT. This however overlooks many layers of ecological science and understanding that underpin the concept of conservation status.
In particular, not all ‘influences’ acting on a habitat affect conservation status in the same way. Some such influences are what ecologists refer to as ‘limiting factors’. A clear-cut example of this would be water availability, as no amount of river habitat restoration work will restore healthy fish populations, if there is no water.
Nutrient pollution is also a ‘limiting factor’ in a similar way. Put simply, if the reason a habitat type is in poor condition is that it is saturated in nutrient pollution, then no amount of ‘positive management’ or reduction in deer browsing will bully that habitat into a good conservation status.
As an ecologist who has worked directly on the restoration of fens and other habitats, I can say without hesitation, that if you cut and remove the excessive plant growth of the vigorous-growing species that best exploit nutrient pollution, without choking off the source of that pollution, then the same vigorous plant growth will simply return and re-occupy the niche that you have cleared (you won’t magically summon the assemblages of more delicate and rarer native species that would normally occupy that habitat in an unpolluted context).
Shooting deer will prevent some damage to habitats, but again it will not lead to the restoration of good conservation status in fens and wet woodland habitats, where the overriding factor limiting the condition of those habitats is nutrient pollution.
Seeing this fundamental problem doesn’t require one to be a professional ecologist. A question relayed to me by a concerned MP was “I’m not an ecologist, but isn’t the pretty obvious risk of the plan that (especially in the case of the chalk streams) lots of good work will (hopefully) happen that improves the ecological and physical health of the rivers but the increased pollution leaves them chemically dead, rendering the whole process redundant?”.
One final point is that one of the main ‘conservation measures’ of the draft EDP is “fen-type wetland habitat management […primarily focusing] on condition units of the Yare Broads and Marshes Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) currently not in favourable condition” (para.762).
For me, this raises ‘additionality’ concerns, as it essentially proposes to trade environmental harm (arising through an unrelated mechanism) against remedial management which should in my view occur in any event, under existing obligations pertaining to the essential care of Sites of Special Scientific Interest under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 (as amended) and to SACs under parts of the Habitats Directive that the UK agreed to continue to implement after Brexit.
In my view, offering essential management of a protected site that should already be required under existing obligations, in exchange for allowing new harms, opens up whole Pandora’s box of new systemic risks elsewhere – it potentially gives a green flag to unscrupulous owners of protected sites everywhere to permit them to lapse into degraded status, so that they can then offer their recovery and appropriate management in exchange for being allowed to cause new harms through some form of development or other (i.e. the arsonist can then return in fireman’s clothing).
So, how is the EDP different from what was advertised?
During the passage of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill through Parliament, the Government took great pains to reassure concerned objectors that all would be well.
One of the biggest concerns they spoke to, was that the Bill did not enshrine the ‘mitigation hierarchy’. This is a well-established approach that prioritises the avoidance of ecological harm over the mitigation (reduction) of harm wherever practicable, and prefers both impact avoidance and mitigation over the provision of ‘compensation’ as a ‘last resort’ (compensation means the provision of a new ecological feature or benefit, to offset the unavoidable loss or damage of an original feature).
The mitigation hierarchy exists because many decades of ecological practice and research has shown that avoiding or mitigating an impact generally carries a much lower risk of failure, is more likely to be effective and is also usually more cost effective than trying to create new high-value and high-complexity ecological features.
The concern was that, unless made a requirement in the Bill, the authors of EDPs might jump straight to the ‘compensation’ stage of the mitigation hierarchy (if for example those measures were easier or cheaper), and not adequately explore the opportunities for avoiding harm in the first place.
To allay these concerns, when the Government offered its own amendments to try to reassure objectors on 19 September 2025, it asserted that it was not necessary to enshrine the mitigation hierarchy in the Bill, because the EDPs would already be required to adhere to it under the Environmental Principles Policy Statements published under the Environment Act 2021. The Government press release accompanying the amendments stated the following:
“….. all the environmental principles – including the prevention, rectification at source, and precautionary principles – must be considered by Natural England in preparing an EDP, because the Secretary of State is under an existing duty under the Environment Act 2021 to have due regard to the Environmental Principles Policy Statement. This will add additional assurance that the Secretary of State will have regard to these important principles when making an EDP.”
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, subsequently backed up this position during the debate in the House of Lords, stating:
“…we wanted to be very clear that the mitigation hierarchy lives in this model but has to be expressed in a different way given this move to a strategic approach. We have debated that many times before. The different levels of the hierarchy do not neatly map on to the different types of conservation measures available under an EDP, so we will use regulations to set out how those principles are expressed through the NRF.” [29 October 2025]
And
“….on the mitigation hierarchy, Natural England will always consider the mitigation hierarchy when it develops EDPs. It is an important approach when planning for biodiversity, as it is generally more environmentally effective and cost efficient to protect what is already there than to replace it. However, it is not always the case. The flexibility provided by the Bill will allow for those cases where, in Natural England’s expert judgment, the strict appliance of the mitigation hierarchy would lead to suboptimal outcomes, and only then, and where money could be spent far more effectively to achieve better outcomes for nature.”
“Both these structures are reinforced by the existing legal obligation, under the Environment Act 2021, for the Secretary of State to have due regard to the environmental principles policy statement when making policy, which will also apply when making an EDP. This will itself encourage compliance with the mitigation hierarchy through the prevention and “rectification at source” principles.”
Baroness Taylor subsequently headed off an attempt by a fellow Peer to enshrine the mitigation hierarchy into the Bill, by offering to bring forward Regulations that would achieve this in practice through an alternative mechanism. The Government did subsequently publish ‘The Environmental Delivery Plans (Appropriate Prioritisation) Regulations’, which came into force on 9 July 2026. These do indeed ask Natural England to prioritise impact avoidance and mitigation over compensation, but only “where they consider it appropriate to do so” and after having had “…regard to the extent to which they deliver value for money”.
I do not believe that something can be described as having ‘value for money’, when it will not work, for the reasons I have outlined above.
Another key concern held by critics of the PIA was the potential for EDPs to be used to facilitate the damage or destruction of irreplaceable habitats. To address this concern, Baroness Parminter attempted to insert an amendment into the Bill that would prevent this, but was prevented from doing so following reassurances given by the Government and relayed to the debate via Baroness Taylor, who said the following on 29 October 2025:
“The noble Baroness’s [Baroness Parminter] amendment also speaks to the position in respect of irreplaceable habitats. This returns us to the overall improvement test, which simply would not allow an EDP to be made if it would lead to irreversible or irreparable harm, as this would fail to secure the overall improvement of the conservation status of the relevant environmental feature required under the test. Where an environmental feature is irreplaceable, an EDP could not allow for this feature to be lost, as that would fail to materially outweigh the impact of the development.”
Both the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and the Biodiversity Net Gain Regulations consider ‘Lowland Fen’ to be an irreplaceable habitat, and there are four recognised categories of Lowland Fen that form the qualifying features of the designated sites affected by this EDP.
Lowland Fen made it onto the list of irreplaceable habitats because, whilst it may be technically possible to create new fen or fen-like habitat, it is extremely difficult to re-create a facsimile of the sort of high-quality, ecologically rich and biodiverse fen system that you can still find in places like the Norfolk Broads. Examples of these higher quality fen systems might support a great many rare and specialised native species of plants (such as the endangered Fen Orchid, which exists in only a handful of sites in England – all in the Norfolk Broads), or other unique features (such as, for example, Milk Parsley, which is the larval foodplant for the Swallowtail Butterfly that is again endemic to the Norfolk Broads). I find the treatment of Fen Orchid in the EDP particularly upsetting – despite this plant requiring such incredibly exacting conditions that once saw it reduced to only 3 known sites in the Norfolk Broads (until conservation effort saw these expanded), the EDP simply lumps it into the ‘fen and fen-like habitat’ category, as if it can live in fen of any type or quality (which it can’t).
In summary, one cannot simply ‘summon up’ the degree of ecological complexity and biodiversity that is represented in some of the fens of the Norfolk Broads, as to do so would require both the re-creation of an incredibly narrow range of biological, chemical and physical conditions, and a nearby source of the rare and specialised species to enable colonisation of the new habitat (neither of which will happen in an area suffering from high nutrient pollution).
It is for this same reason that ancient woodland is considered ‘irreplaceable’ – you may re-create woodland that may even appear similar to a non-expert, but you cannot re-create the immense ecological and biological complexity of the original ancient woodland, manifested by unique prevailing conditions that extended over vast expanses of time.
Is there at least a good and detailed monitoring strategy laid out, to highlight if the EDP is failing, and enable this to be tackled?
Unfortunately not (at least in my view).
Section 9 of the draft EDP covers monitoring and reporting and deals almost entirely with generalisations. It says (for example) that ‘both qualitative and quantitative monitoring data will be collected’, which is a statement that simultaneously manages to describe all possible forms of data, without actually naming any one specific form of data that will be measured or monitored.
Some of the generalisations used hint at the right idea – for example, the need to monitor more frequently in the earlier years is acknowledged, but this again doesn’t actually provide any specificity that might give comfort that the right monitoring will happen, or indeed enable a stakeholder to meaningfully engage with the consultation.
For me, monitoring details are particularly important – the PIA only mandates that Natural England report on the progress of an EDP at year 5 (the mid-point) and year 10 (the end-point) of an EDP. Unless monitoring and reporting happens more frequently than this therefore (and records the right things), it is entirely possible that we will be told at year 5 that the EDP is failing and needs to be amended, and then at year 10 that it did fail.
Whilst the Secretary of State is required to consider remedial action in these circumstances, such action need not be taken if the cost of remediation is considered to be disproportionate (which could well be the case if there has been 10 years of unmitigated damage).
Good monitoring therefore will be essential in providing an ‘early warning’ of problems, so that timely action can be taken to prevent damage whilst it is still practicable to do so.
I personally would have expected the draft EDP to at least set out what Natural England intends to monitor (e.g. nutrient levels at locations X and Y, habitat condition in locations Z etc.), how often they intend to monitor those things, how they will know if the monitoring has detected a problem, and what the response would be.
In the absence of any of these details, I do not see how a stakeholder can meaningfully engage with this consultation on the subject of monitoring, and I am left with the concern that monitoring has been an afterthought.
Will the EDP at least be good for developers and the delivery of new homes?
Well, possibly in the Norfolk area (although I doubt it) – but it may have the reverse effect when considered across the whole of England.
The EDP specifies that the tariff charged to developers using the EDP to avoid needing to meet the Habitats Regulations will be £2,675 per dwelling. Putting aside for a minute the fact that the amount seems inadequate to fund even the measures listed in the EDP, that a large proportion of this is earmarked to cover administrative costs, and that there is only a 5% contingency included; the level at which this tariff is set could have profound consequences.
If the tariff is set too low, then not only will it fail to fund the required conservation measures, it will undercut all of the existing providers of nutrient mitigation schemes within the catchment (i.e. endorsed evidence-based schemes that developers currently have to pay into, that actually do reduce nutrient pollution – for example by tackling the pollution coming from a farm). At worst therefore, the EDP will not only fail to reduce nutrient pollution itself, it will divert money away from schemes that actually do.
Beyond Norfolk, prospective providers of environmental mitigation schemes right across the country will also now see that, should they decide to invest their land and their money in bringing forward a genuine evidence-based mitigation scheme to tackle an environmental problem, they could lose all of their customers overnight, if Natural England decides to create an EDP in their area. This therefore effectively kills the business case for private individuals and companies bringing forward schemes that aim to solve the environmental problems caused by development related pressures. If private mitigation markets across the UK are spooked in this way and mitigation options disappear outside of EDP areas, then the perverse outcome could actually be that development Nationally slows down.
At present, the jury is ‘out’ on whether the tariff rate will undermine existing mitigation schemes. I have seen information that suggests that the chosen tariff is roughly half the cost of some existing mitigation schemes, but I have also heard from other reputable sources that it sits at about the mid-point in the market for others. What is clear, is that the EDP contains no evidence that this issue has been given serious consideration. Again, during the passage of the Bill through Parliament last year, the Government gave reassurances that it would consider how best to avoid undermining private investment in nature markets, but there does not seem to be any evidence that it has actually done this.
For developers, the ability of the Secretary of State to vary the tariff in future must also be a concern. It effectively leaves the cost paid by developers to one politically exposed individual, and leaves open the possibility that the cost might change significantly between Governments, depending on political priorities. To me, this doesn’t sound like the stability that most businesses seek. I also wonder what will happen when it is found, after the final year of the 10-year EDP, that nutrient pollution levels in the Broads have not decreased sufficiently, developers are asked to pay again, for the next 10-year EDP that doesn’t tackle the problem, or perhaps even worse, are wrongly saddled with a share of the public’s blame and anger that these waterbodies remain in a poor state.
Another significant problem with the currently proposed EDP process that I have heard some developers raise is that, at present, they must make a commitment to pay the levy at the outline planning application stage. This is before they’ve obtained an implementable consent, and by extension before they know that they will be able to get a return on any money invested into a prospective development site. This seems to me to be quite a risk for them to take. If too few developers decide to invest in an EDP, then there is a real risk either that it will not be possible to fund key conservation measures (for example the purchase of land to create new habitat), or that the taxpayer will have to step in and plug the gap.
What can I do about this?
If, like me, you are disturbed by all this and want to do what you can to push for a better outcome, then I would encourage you to read the draft EDP, make up your own mind what you think, and then make representations to Natural England.
Please hurry, however – we only have until 9.29am on Tuesday 27 October 2026 to make our views known and try to encourage improvements in the approach. The link to the consultation is here:
Ben Kite is a Chartered Ecologist, environmental planner and the Director of Ecological Planning & Research Ltd, based in England. He has given evidence on ecology and land-use planning to select committees in both the House of Commons and House of Lords, is the Chair of the Strategic Policy Panel (SPP) of the Chartered Institute of Ecolgoy and Environmental Management (CIEEM) and was named in the 2025 and 2026 ENDS Power Lists as one of the UK 100 most influential environmental professionals.
