Opinion: Shelving the climate bill is positive for the development sector
Rico Wojtulewicz of the National Federation of Builders explains the government are better off avoiding past mistakes and producing a well deliberated legislation.
On Friday 24th January ministers gathered in the House of Commons to discuss the ‘Climate and Nature Private Members Bill’, which was brought forward by Lib Dem MP Dr Roz Savage. The legislation aims to establish binding targets for climate and nature and grant the secretary of state powers to implement a strategy to achieve them.
However at the second reading, ministers decided to head off the bill to try and avoid an internal row over its policies. Before Friday’s debate, ministers insisted on axing clauses that would have required the UK to meet the targets agreed to at Cop.
The decision has come as a shock to many, especially as a vast amount of labour MPs previously agreed to back Lib Dem’s climate policy. What’s more, some Labour MPs have expressed concerns about chancellor Rachel Reeves’s recent comments that she would prioritise economic growth over net zero.
Though it hasn’t come as a shock to us. The National Federation of Builders – a leading trade association for construction – have worked closely with the government’s old and new to ensure they understand the impact of environmental and climate polices on the sector. Unfortunately, many of these decision in the past have led to increased taxation, lower growth or have simply amounted to nothing.
Below I have outlined examples of where industry warnings were overlooked by previous leaders.
The Treasury’s decision to remove the construction industry’s access to red diesel increased project costs and fuel theft, while also creating new maintenance expenses for the plant hire sector. Three years on, most machinery remains diesel fuelled, with the limited availability of electric plant machinery still to be charged by diesel generators.
DEFRA’s Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) approach, which is championed as an ‘onsite first policy’ but for most developments cannot be delivered onsite, is creating offsite habitats miles from original development sites. Their strategy also neglects local biodiversity and, if projects can afford the sky-high mitigation costs, means new developments do not build in biodiversity but instead, can create physical barriers within a wildlife corridor. Due to being a statutory requirement, BNG is also reducing levels of affordable housing.
Sticking with DEFRA, Nutrient Neutrality schemes attempt to reduce the pollution entering our waterways, not by targeting the polluters but the new build sector, which in some areas accounts for less than 1% of total pollution. Like BNG, Nutrient Neutrality leads to farming land being taken out of use to provide mitigation credits via habitat creation and in the process reducing the UK’s food security.
In the MHCLG, vital grid investment, such as pylons and substations, continue to be stopped by NIMBY sentiments, while the government obsesses over the energy efficiency of new homes, despite these new homes accounting for only 1% of stock and already being 65% more efficient than old homes.
These outcomes exist because somebody tried to use policy levers to do the right thing but, in the process, ignores the broader impacts. This consequently damages sustainable environmental and climate improvement, stifles maintainable change, and embeds zero sum outcomes.
Worse still, those businesses, our SMEs, that have historically offered the solutions that many champion, such as building within communities and so reducing car dependency, installing renewable energy solutions within buildings, and working with local communities on nature conservation and access, have been leaving the sector at an alarming rate which has made doing business impossible and unprofitable.
While well intentioned, the Climate and Nature Bill is a legislation of unexplored and unintended consequences, far eclipsing the policy harms detailed above. The government is therefore correct to head it off and reassess the UK’s role in solving a global challenge, while balancing the many competing domestic needs, from renewable energy and biodiversity to growth and healthy societies.
Other features:
Brownfield passports: A path to clarity or a rebranding of old policy?
Without intervention the Flood and Water Management Act will sink
Westminster to ditch ‘For Sale’ signs, but is this the best decision?
