It is depressing to see The Times lead their front page with an article suggesting the Government is intending to replace species protection legislation with a ‘Nature Restoration Fund’. On our LinkedIn page our CEO Tom Tew characterises the situation thus: 

Option a) Fully protect all individual animals of certain species, do not ever allow development where species might be affected 

Option b) Actively conserve populations of species – devise systems that quickly allow proper impact assessments (precautionary principle), avoid worst impacts (mitigation hierarchy) and require proportionate recompense (polluter pays) 

Option c) Cast aside 50 years of legislation and principles, ignore all species & site assessments, enforce a standard fee to a ‘recovery fund’ from all developers regardless of impact and then forget the environment* 

Just to unpack option b a little, which is of course all about District Licensing. We have shown over the last 7 years, working with 65 Local Planning Authorities and for hundreds of housebuilders, large and small, that District Licensing works well. By ‘works well’ we mean the following: 

• Better for newts – our District Licensing scheme has created over 500 ponds and 1500ha of terrestrial habitat and funds their management in perpetuity; we create new ponds for every one lost and, after just 7 years of the scheme, we are seeing for the first time in 80 years, the conservation status of the great crested newt reverse its decline and start to tick up in the areas we work. 

• Better for developers – the scheme creates a ‘one-stop shop’ for developers that is quick, certain and effective. There are no delays for housebuilders – development is not held up by newts and good developers are happy to account for their environmental impacts in return for speed and certainty. 

• Better for taxpayers – the NatureSpace scheme doesn’t use a penny of taxpayers money and furthermore pays for ecological support for Local Authorities (reducing their workload) and sustains a not-for-profit delivery body comprised of newt experts from our NGO partners. 

We’ve spent so long proving that option b actually works – District Licensing with Local Planning Authorities and Organisational Licensing with infrastructure providers removes all delays for all parties – that it’s depressing to see The Times report that apparently the new Government favours option c for species conservation. We think the Government is smarter than this and trust the newspapers are wrong.