Guidance

Summary: Planning and Infrastructure Bill, Government Amendments to Part 3 (Lords Committee Stage)

Updated 17 July 2025

The government is determined to deliver on its Plan for Change milestones of building 1.5 million safe and decent homes and making decisions on at least 150 major infrastructure projects by the end of this Parliament.

We remain firmly of the view that when it comes to development and the environment, we can do better than the status quo, which too often sees both sustainable housebuilding and nature recovery stall. Instead of environmental protections being seen as barriers to growth, we are determined to unlock a win-win for the economy and for nature.

The current approach to discharging environmental obligations is too often delaying and deterring development and placing unnecessary burdens on housebuilders and local authorities. It requires housebuilders to pay for localised and often costly mitigation measures, only to maintain the environmental status quo. By not taking a holistic view across larger geographies, mitigation measures often fail to secure the best outcomes for the environment.

The Nature Restoration Fund will end this sub-optimal arrangement. By facilitating a more strategic approach to the discharge of environmental obligations, it will streamline the delivery of new homes and infrastructure and result in improved environmental outcomes being delivered more efficiently.

Following the introduction of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, we have taken very seriously the concerns expressed by those who are not yet convinced that the provisions in Part 3 provide the necessary certainty that the Nature Restoration Fund will deliver in practice the potential environmental benefits it offers and who question whether the safeguards in the Bill are sufficiently robust.

With a view to ensuring that everyone has confidence that the Nature Restoration Fund delivers the improved outcomes for nature that are at the core of the model, we have continued to engage with expert stakeholders, including environmental organisations and housebuilders, as well as the Office for Environmental Protection.

Having done so, the government has developed a comprehensive set of amendments for consideration during the Lords Committee Stage of the Bill. As part of that exercise, we have also taken the opportunity to address wider issues raised during parliamentary debates as to how the Nature Restoration Fund will operate going forward.

Taken together, we are confident the following package will provide reassurance that the Nature Restoration Fund will restore, not harm nature, while at the same time ensuring housebuilders benefit from the same streamlined process to discharge their environmental obligations and get Britain building:

The overall improvement test

The overall improvement test is the existing test that the Secretary of State must consider to be passed before they can approve an Environmental Delivery Plan (EDP). The government has always been clear that it is one of the key environmental safeguards in the new system and, as such, it is vital that there is confidence in its operation.

The amendment we are tabling clarifies this test. It removes any risk of ambiguity by making it clear that the Secretary of State can only approve an EDP where the effect of the conservation measures will materially outweigh the negative effect of development on the conservation status of each identified environmental feature. This provides further assurance for communities and developers that outcomes will be delivered, and that the actions taken under an EDP must lead to a material improvement for the relevant environmental feature.

Back-up measures and monitoring

At introduction, the Bill provided the ability for Natural England to include back-up conservation measures within an EDP which could be used if the initial conservation measures were not delivering the desired outcome. Reflecting the original intent that these back-up measures would be used where necessary, our amendments now make it clear and mandatory for an EDP to include back-up measures, as well as explicitly requiring Natural England to monitor the effectiveness of conservation measures.

Where monitoring shows that the primary conservation measures are failing to deliver, this would then trigger a requirement for Natural England to deploy the back-up measures. This combination of monitoring and direct action to address any underperformance provides further assurance that an EDP will deliver in line with the overall improvement test.

Remedial action

While back-up measures provide greater certainty of outcome, we also propose to reframe the duty on the Secretary of State to deliver remedial action in the unlikely event that the conservation measures and back-up conservation measures do not deliver as originally foreseen. We propose an explicit requirement for midpoint, endpoint and revocation reports to set out whether the EDP is still likely to, or has passed, the overall improvement test.

Should the endpoint report contain an assessment that the conservation measures are not likely to, or have not passed, the overall improvement test, the Secretary of State will be under a duty to take proportionate action to address any shortfall in environmental outcomes. These measures will need to be set out in a report, containing a clear assessment of the effect the Secretary of State expects those actions to have. The Secretary of State will then also need to review the effect of these measures two years later.

Evidence and transparency

We have always been clear that Natural England as the Delivery Body will use a robust evidence base when determining which conservation measures to take forward. In order to provide the greatest possible assurance that this will always be the case – and reflecting what would have happened in practice – we are including an explicit provision in the primary legislation requiring both Natural England and the Secretary of State to take account of the best available scientific evidence when preparing, amending or revoking an EDP. 

In addition, and again making the existing intent more explicit, we will also now require EDPs to set out the anticipated sequencing of the implementation of conservation measures – with specific reference to the timing of development coming forward. This will provide additional assurance that EDPs will not lead to open-ended or irreversible impacts from development. This would include detail as to whether and which conservation measures must be in place in advance of development coming forward, ensuring that no irreversible harm could occur to an environmental feature. This would form part of the Secretary of State’s assessment of whether an EDP would pass the overall improvement test. Upfront conservation measures may be necessary in instances where a habitat or species is rare or fragile, requiring immediate action to improve its conservation status before development impacting upon it could be approved.

Amending an EDP

As part of this package, we have included new provisions to clarify the consultation requirements when amending an EDP – where the intent had always been to ensure consultation was taken forward where it was proportionate to do so. This will ensure that where an EDP makes a significant amendment, measured by its meeting certain criteria, there will now always be a requirement to consult on that amendment, so that the public and expert stakeholders are able to contribute to and comment on the proposals.

Delivery of conservation measures

We have always been clear that Natural England should be empowered to secure conservation measures that will provide the best outcomes for the environment. That is why it is crucial to embed flexibility in this new approach to avoid the sub-optimal outcomes that occur under the current system’s rigid approach to the selection of environmental interventions.  We believe this should apply even if, in Natural England’s expert judgement, those measures should be delivered at a different site to where the development impacts are being felt.

In providing this flexibility, we have always recognised it is crucial that conservation measures that do not directly address the environmental impact of development on a feature at a specific site should only be used where there is a clear environmental rationale for doing so. Reflecting that position, we have now made it explicit in the Bill that Natural England can only deliver these network measures where they consider that it would make a greater contribution to the improvement of the environmental feature in question than measures that address the impact of development locally.

Under our proposals, Natural England would be required to state how they have reached this conclusion, again with reference to the best available scientific evidence. Crucially, network measures could never be used where to do so would result in the loss of an irreplaceable habitat as this would inherently not pass the overall improvement test.

We are also adding two other provisions to reflect how Natural England would operate in practice: the first requires Natural England, in taking forward network measures of this type, to have regard to the need to protect the overall coherence of the relevant site network; the second means that Natural England will be required explicitly to have regard to a site’s conservation objectives when they relate to an environmental feature included in an EDP.

In designing and delivering conservation measures, Natural England will continue to be guided by existing obligations to seek to achieve and maintain favourable conservation status for protected species. This is also now explicitly embedded in the NRF framework, by way of an additional duty to have regard to maintaining and / or improving favourable conservation status of species subject to an EDP.

These changes underline the continued role for the mitigation hierarchy in the design of EDPs, ensuring that local conservation measures are preferred unless there is a clearly articulated environmental basis to look further afield. When determining what conservation measures to include in an EDP, Natural England would have regard to the desirability to avoid or reduce impacts from development on site, by the use of planning conditions – for example, water efficiency measures in new build housing.

These conditions can be set out within an EDP alongside other conservation measures to outweigh harm that cannot be avoided. The ability to set planning conditions will ensure that EDPs set out how action will be taken to avoid the impact of development in advance of conservation measures being put in place, which will secure the overall improvement to the environmental feature required through this legislation. Natural England will include information on whether and how they considered such options under the existing duty to describe why the conservation measures in a specific EDP are considered appropriate and what alternatives were considered.

Finally, 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.

These amendments demonstrate our commitment to getting this right. The Nature Restoration Fund is a huge opportunity to reframe the relationship between development and the environment. We hope that, with these amendments, stakeholders and parliamentarians can work with the government as we shift our focus to on the ground delivery – driving nature recovery while supporting the delivery of the homes and infrastructure we need.

Implementation and delivery

As we look towards implementing this new model, we recognise there are a number of areas where we will want to work with the sector to develop guidance and regulations that support Natural England in the delivery of the NRF – which will be important in ensuring we deliver the intended benefits for nature and manage the risks that come with a new approach.