Housing developers in England are failing to deliver biodiversity measures required under their planning conditions, with developments routinely missing the woodland planting, wildflower grasslands, hedgehog highways and bat boxes promised by firms.
Since last year, housing developers are required to deliver a 10 per cent net gain in biodiversity or habitat for all new projects in England. Prior to this, earlier policies also encouraged developers to enhance nature in various ways.
To assess how well developers are meeting their environmental obligations, , now at the University of Oxford, and at the University of Sheffield, UK, visited 42 new housing developments of varying sizes across England in August 2024, totalling almost 6000 houses. All of the sites were granted planning permission after 2012. Studying ecological features, they compared what was agreed during the planning process with what was present on the ground.
Advertisement
Across their site visits, only 53 per cent of ecological features mandated by planning conditions were actually present, dropping to just 34 per cent when newly planted trees were excluded. Strikingly, the team found that almost half of native hedgerows that should have been planted were missing, and 39 per cent of trees on planting plans were either missing or dead.
When planners promised to add plants by spreading seed mixes or planting seedlings, the vast majority of these were missing from developments, while most of the wildflower grasslands and wetlands were either missing, improperly planted or poorly maintained. Meanwhile, three-quarters of bird and bat boxes were missing from sites, 83 per cent of hedgehog highways weren鈥檛 in place and no sites had installed promised invertebrate boxes. The research was commissioned by the charity Wild Justice and the findings are published in a
鈥淭he magnitude of the results took me by surprise,鈥� says at the University of Oxford. 鈥淚 was expecting some level of non-compliance with some of these features. I think we鈥檙e all quite familiar with the image of newly planted trees at the sides of roads that have fallen over and not been picked back up. But I think the magnitude of what they found is quite staggering.鈥�
Chapman and Tait say local planning authorities should be given more resources from central government to monitor the delivery of ecological requirements for new housing developments. Currently, many local councils don鈥檛 have enough funding to monitor compliance with planning conditions.
at the University of Reading in the UK says a robust framework for tracking ecological measures is crucial to ensure developers live up to their responsibilities to the environment. Firms should be fined or publicly reprimanded for failures, he suggests. 鈥淵ou wouldn鈥檛 let a painter or decorator with terrible reviews work on your house, and I don鈥檛 know why we do any different with the garden of England,鈥� says Oliver.
There is a high risk that the biodiversity net gain policy will fail without action to improve compliance, warn Duffus and Oliver. 鈥淚f you have a system that relies on promises of restoration, but there鈥檚 no way to monitor and evaluate whether those promises are being kept, that鈥檚 hugely problematic,鈥� says Oliver.
鈥淭he industry is absolutely committed to the twin objectives of delivering ecological enhancements alongside desperately needed energy efficient, water efficient new homes,鈥� said a spokesperson for the , which represents building firms in England and Wales.
A UK government spokesperson said: 鈥淭his government is working closely with the sector to make biodiversity net gain work proportionately and effectively to protect our natural world, and have already committed over 拢35 million to help local planning authorities prepare for and implement biodiversity net gain.鈥�
