Photo by Pete Godfrey
The Marine Management Organisation (MMO) has set out changes to how it supports habitat restoration projects, after gathering feedback from practitioners who told the regulator the marine licensing system can be difficult to navigate. In a blog post published on 2 September, Adam Tillotson, the MMO’s Regulatory Reform Unit Manager, said the organisation is “working with Defra, Natural England and the Environment Agency to identify where improvements can be made.”
What practitioners told the MMO
The feedback was gathered through a questionnaire promoted at the 2025 ReMeMaRe conference – shorthand for Restoring Meadow, Marsh and Reef, the cross-agency initiative that aims to restore at least 15% of England’s lost seagrass meadow, saltmarsh and native oyster reef habitat by 2043. According to the MMO, applicants said they struggled to work out when a marine licence is required, which activities need consent, whether a project falls within the MMO’s jurisdiction, and which environmental impacts need assessing.
The scale of what’s being restored is not trivial. Native oyster reefs across Great Britain have declined by roughly 95%, and saltmarsh coverage has fallen by around 85% since the nineteenth century, while more than nine in ten seagrass meadows are estimated to have disappeared within a single century, according to figures used by both ZSL and Blue Marine Foundation.
Practical fixes on the table
The MMO’s response so far is incremental rather than structural. It points restoration groups towards its ‘Get permission for marine work’ guidance and its paid Pre-Application Advice Service, and suggests applicants consider the full future scope of a project up front to avoid needing separate licence variations later. For organisations planning multiple restoration activities in the same area over several years, it suggests a single strategic application covering the wider programme rather than repeated individual applications.
The MMO says this work “builds on responses received through Defra’s consultation on marine licensing reform” – a reference to Defra’s 2025 consultation on changes to marine licensing fees, exemptions and self-service licences, which closed in August that year. A new questionnaire has now been launched to gather further practitioner input, closing at the end of September 2026.
Part of a wider pattern
The MMO’s approach sits within a much larger debate about whether marine licensing, as currently designed, can support restoration at the pace nature-recovery targets demand. An international team led by Swansea University, publishing in Cell Reports Sustainability in October 2025, argued that permitting systems built for industrial development are “slowing down vital restoration work at a time when oceans are facing an unprecedented decline.” Lead author Richard Unsworth, who is also chief scientific officer at Project Seagrass, said: “The very regulations meant to protect marine life are often blocking the projects designed to restore it. We urgently need smarter, more flexible systems that encourage innovation rather than stifle it.” Co-author Elizabeth Lacey added: “We have a narrow window to turn the tide on ocean decline. Smarter permitting could be the key to unlocking large-scale restoration at the speed the planet needs.”
That paper’s six proposed reforms – including designated “restoration zones” with streamlined approvals, permits aligned to long-term ecological timescales, and the removal of licensing fees for restoration work – are echoed almost point for point in a more detailed report published by Blue Marine Foundation in July 2026, which goes considerably further than the MMO’s own response. That report argues the core problem is that the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 “was designed to regulate industrial development and prevent harm from extractive activities. It was not designed to facilitate ecological recovery,” with the result that restoration is “consented by exception rather than enabled by design.” Among its findings: marine licence applications are charged at £122 an hour with no fee cap once a project triggers a full Habitats Regulations assessment, and determination delays of six to twelve months are common enough to cost projects an entire growing season.
Wales already moving further
The Blue Marine Foundation report points to Wales as the most concrete example of reform in action. The Marine Licensing (Exempted Activities) (Wales) (Amendment) Order 2026, which came into force on 1 April, removed the marine licensing requirement entirely for qualifying small-scale, non-commercial seagrass restoration work, provided practitioners notify Natural Resources Wales in advance. Scotland, meanwhile, published a Marine and Coastal Restoration Plan in December 2025 committing to a dedicated support post to help practitioners navigate the regulatory system. England, the report notes, “has yet to establish a comparable enabling environment.”
Have your say
The MMO’s current questionnaire gives practitioners a direct route to feed into what the regulator describes as ongoing work with Defra “to review feedback from restoration practitioners and identify opportunities to improve the licensing experience wherever practical.” The survey closes at the end of September 2026.