Budget cuts threaten to weaken powers of England’s nature watchdog
Established on 1 October 2006 through the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act, Natural England is the non-departmental bit of Defra responsible for ensuring the natural environment is protected and improved. It’s been in the news this week after Greenpeace obtained an internal document from June setting out how the body will “make more proportionate use of our regulatory powers” and “retain our regulatory powers but will use them more proportionately and more efficiently, while increasingly operating through advice and partnership.” This has led to a series of debates around whether raising funding from the private companies it’s supposed to be keeping in check will weaken the body; if the body is becoming pro-development; whether providing “advice to government that is politically aware” means its ability to provide science-based independent advice will be diminished; and what the effects of capturing site information remotely rather than through visits and environmental record centres might have. According to the article, Natural England is less likely to go to court compared to five years ago, and less likely to take up cases on a local level: with the Wildlife Trusts citing Natural England’s failure to stop the ploughing of a wildflower meadow in Coventry and withdrawing an objection related to a housing development in Chudleigh that the threatened greater horseshoe bats in a protected area. Natural England is facing a budget cut of 27% and a reduction in headcount of 20% by 2020. In order to raise more money as its budget is cut by £30 million by the end of 2020 compared to 2015-2016 levels, Natural England plans to raise more money by charging the private sector, such as water companies, housebuilders and windfarm developers, for its services. It raised £1.43 million in 2015-2016 by charging £110 an hour for such services, and hopes to increase this to £12 million a year by 2020. Martin Harper, the RSPB’s conservation director, said: “Nature is in trouble – and so it is vital that we have a strong and effective statutory nature conservation agency able to do whatever nature needs…Natural England has already been subject to huge reductions in its capacity to do its vital job, and the current political context means that it has increasingly moved away from using the full range of tools available to protect and restore nature. However, a representative from Natural England described how “there has been absolutely no change in Natural England’s statutory role or driving mission to protect and enhance the country’s nature, habitats and landscapes… Working with communities and stakeholders ever more efficiently, we will assess challenges and implement solutions on a ‘landscape scale’, always focussing on the ultimate outcome: an improved environment for all of us”. Will Natural England have ‘significantly reduced national capacity?’ Watch this space…