The detail and policy action required beyond the King’s Speech

There was much to be optimistic about following the King's Speech. It would be difficult not to react positively to draft legislation aimed at accelerating the pathway to clean electricity. Surely, we all want to see that.

Likewise, plans to beef up the regulation of water companies following the many environmental incidents that we've seen in recent memory, particularly concerning the illegal discharge of untreated sewage into rivers, are a welcome step forward.

However, it's also important that we shine a spotlight on some of the areas where we need more detail to take a comprehensive view and other areas altogether that don't necessarily require legislative intervention, but nevertheless need to be addressed in the weeks and months ahead.

In relation to those legislative areas whereby more detail is required there is one standout - planning reform.

Planning was an area that the previous administration had spent a great deal of time consulting on with stakeholders. Primarily to understand if there were solutions that could be developed to speed up the process of achieving consents on both housing development and major infrastructure projects.

From an impact assessment (IA) perspective, there were big questions that remained unanswered when the election was called in relation to the new Environmental Outcomes Reports (EOR) regime that was being developed to replace the conventional approach to IA.

Our understanding was that this new approach would mean that less rigorous assessment would be required for projects to achieve planning consent. Namely because the detail of how this new outcomes-based approach was being benchmarked and how it would be measured wasn’t clear.

Further still, it wasn’t obvious either how this shift in approach was being married up with the goals and targets that were being delivered through the Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP) i.e. the main vehicle for delivering better outcomes for the natural environment.

If the new government are to continue down the pathway of introducing an EOR approach as part of its planning reform agenda, then these are questions that must be answered early on in its tenure.

Largely outside the scope of the King’s Speech and the new government’s legislative programme, there are other urgent policy interventions that are needed.

These include things like improving environmental governance. We’ve spent a great deal of time since the introduction of the Environmental Act calling for its various policy instruments to be better aligned.

This includes the relationship between the EIP, the long-term targets framework and the Environmental Policy Principles Statement. These instruments do not effectively talk to one another meaning that their respective effectiveness is diminished, and that the salience of key environmental issues is not being fully acknowledged across government.

There also remains an ongoing need for a land use framework that enables the effective interaction of different spatial policies including biodiversity net gain, environmental land management schemes and planning reform, whichever shape this now takes under Labour.

Finally, and returning briefly to legislative requirements, there remains a broad need for a legal framework that ties together our approach to tackling the biodiversity and climate crises. This reflection was included in our initial reaction to the King’s Speech, which is available here.

Ben Goodwin

Director of Policy and Public Affairs, IEMA, IEMA

Ben is Director of Policy and Public Affairs at IEMA. In this capacity he looks after the delivery of IEMAs core policy, practice and public affairs activities across a range of environmental and sustainability issues. Prior to joining the organisation Ben worked in several similar policy roles at organisations including the Institution of Civil Engineers and the Renewable Energy Association.