Greener UK, a group of 14 major environmental organisations has produced a briefing on one of the elements they see as missing from the government’s initial proposals for the Environment Bill: a mechanism for translating national objectives into local delivery. The briefing states that the Bill needs to include provisions to ensure a long term and strategic approach to environmental planning, with the creation of a Nature Recovery Network that extends well beyond existing protected sites and drives improved ecological functioning and ecosystem restoration across England.

This process should bring together relevant public authorities, local stakeholders and experts to create Nature Recovery Maps and Plans, which can target where and in what way environmental enhancement needs to happen. All public bodies should then be obliged to take these maps and plans into account in planning and spending decisions. Involving the public in deliberative processes about the future of local landscapes and neighbourhoods would mean better environmental planning goes hand in hand with democratic renewal. Click here to read more