The new Government has recognised that it needs to increase housebuilding not only to alleviate England's housing crisis but also to generate revenues quickly to pay for public services. The deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, wants to ‘kickstart' the economy, ‘unleash' home building and ‘power local growth', To get there the Government has announced a series of planning reforms to try and remove some of the barriers to home building. It has also signalled its intention to address the issue of nutrient neutrality.
We estimate the nutrients issue is preventing the construction of over 160,000 homes, across 74 Local Planning Authorities. The restriction has been in place for over five years in some areas.
Our other great frustration is that no one in government can tell us how much nutrient there is in the 27 catchments where Natural England's restrictions apply, and how much would need to be removed to return these to a favourable condition
The Government has yet to announce its plan although one idea, suggested by an article in a national newspaper, is that it may allow home builders to commence construction subject to a ‘Grampian' condition preventing the occupation of the homes until mitigation is established. This idea was floated by Labour last year as an alternative to the Conservative Government's amendment to the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill. Home builders were unenthusiastic. Local authorities can already do this, if they are inclined to do so, but very few home builders are comfortable with commencing construction without any certainty of when the mitigation that is required by law will be delivered. Only once the mitigation is in place can homes be sold and occupied. The risk is too great.
A further clue is provided by Rayner's and environment secretary Steve Reed's letter to nature conservation organisations on 20 July. In this letter the Government appeals to these organisations to recognise the economic challenges facing the country. The letter emphasises the need to increase home building and to work to achieve net improvements in environmental conservation. This appeal for cooperation, and the reference to the need to think beyond ‘case-by-case negotiations of mitigation and compensation measures' suggests that the Government might be thinking about something more than simply accelerating the supply of mitigation schemes which had become the focus of the last government. The last government had awarded £110 million to several local authorities under its Local Nutrient Mitigation Fund to deliver these schemes. Most of these schemes are beginning to yield good results, but it has taken time, and some catchments are still struggling.
The truth is that home builders should never have been saddled with the problem of cleaning up our rivers. Effluent is produced by all of us, and it is irrelevant whether you live in a recently constructed home or one built in the seventeenth century.
Moreover, research by the Home Builders Federation last year showed that the occupants of new homes would be responsible for less than one per cent of the nutrients produced. By far the greatest contribution to nutrients in rivers is from farming – responsible for around 75 to 80%. More importantly, the effluent from new homes travels by pipe into the sewerage works operated by the water company.
Natural England's advice is clear that the issue for new residential development is foul water outflow via wastewater treatment works. Discharges from wastewater treatment works are regulated by the Environment Agency through the discharge consent regime operated under the Water Industry Act 1991. This statutory process is overseen by Ofwat and Defra. All these statutory bodies are subject to duties to protect the environment under the Habitat Regulations. If there is an issue with heightened levels of nutrients in the relevant catchments (increasing in tiny part because of the occupation of new homes) then the problem stems from a failure by the water companies not home builders.
In addition to the statutory duty on water companies, they have also received over £1 billion in infrastructure charges and adopted assets from home builders over the past three years. The focus of the Government's attention should be for the Environment Agency to enforce against water companies rather than Natural England advising local authorities to refuse housebuilding. Stopping new development will make no material difference to nutrient levels, but the Environment Agency and Defra amending discharge permits will.
Our other great frustration is that no one in government can tell us how much nutrient there is in the 27 catchments where Natural England's restrictions apply, and how much would need to be removed to return these to a favourable condition. Nor can anyone tell us which activities are contributing to the problem (source apportionment) in addition to home building. Unlike anyone else, the home building industry is subject to a unique and major restriction on its business, although the information in the public domain justifying this restriction is not available. By invoking the precautionary principle, the Government and its agencies are able to claim a risk, so home building must stop.
Home builders are willing to play their part, but the Government needs to ensure that the statutory processes overseen by its agencies are operating effectively and fairly.
James Stevens is director for cities at the Home Builders Federation
News: Nutrient neutrality plan won't unblock building, warn housebuilders
