Ever since Natural England issued advice to the councils around Stodmarsh we have been trying to be helpful to the councils caught up by nutrient neutrality. We are approaching three years now*. It has been a tough gig – previously I have been heard to whinge about GDPR but by comparison to nutrients it is a walk in the park.
A key part of our support, alongside our web content and legal advice (shortly to be updated), we have held regular meetings with the lead people from the catchment, helping everyone involved learn from each other [and – no joke – go through the Kubler Ross grief cycle]. As is the way these days, mostly the meetings are virtual get-togethers and we have been fortunate to get the help and support of the key players including DLUHC, Defra, NE, EA, Ofwat, and some of the trusts.
However last week [before all the nutrient news over the weekend] we met up in person, at the London Wetland Centre [recommended as a meeting venue if you can get there]. It felt like good timing – many councils have submitted a bid to get involved delivering mitigation, and while the assessment process grinds on in government this was a chance to think through what might happen next. It feels like** there may be many millions of pounds up for grabs – so we wanted people to think beyond the normal “we need money and resources” and to spell out what else they might need to get things done fast.
Perhaps playing to the strengths of being in the same room we had quite an old-fashioned table discussion complete with (real) post-its and pens. This post is a reflection then on the conversation my table had, along with some thoughts I had on the train home. Let’s start with the six post-its from my table: [note that I haven’t had time to turn this into finely crafted text and it is still quite post-it-y]
There is already lots going on in the world of nutrients
Not all of it out in the open yet or finished (or clear what is going to happen)
- NE wetland guidance (its pretty finished, just needs a final shove)
- Subsequent phases of the NE mitigation scheme
- Credit tracking software from NE – will they let other providers use it? Tracking offsets sounds like one of those things that is more difficult than it seems
- Protected sites strategies (a longer-term but more holistic approach – we are recruiting for this at the moment)
We should avoid reinventing the wheel, and most obviously learn from NE’s experiences so far from the Tees and elsewhere. Everyone is desperate to find quick solutions, but we need to find things that are robust enough to withstand the inevitable challenges.
We’d like help with process please***
Huge potential time sink if we all try to learn some of the basics from scratch. We need help, support, framework, template (whatever) :
- procurement
- legal
- site screening / assessment
- probity
- due diligence
Beyond the routine paperwork, its helpful also to understand relationships and roles
- talking to farmers / landowners
- working with trusts and ecological groups
- calling on ecological expertise
We’d also like help with stewardship please
Lots of potential process specific to stewardship. This isn’t natural territory for planners. We probably don’t want to get too involved unless we really have to, but it would appear that enforcement (at least) is coming our way.
- management, maintenance over the long term
- enforcement (perhaps in another council’s area)
Doing “deals” unconnected with planning applications is novel. There might also be some probity angles if we’re using council-owned land or giving some private people the benefit of sewarage upgrades for free. We don’t really understand all this stuff and don’t want legal challenge or delay. Other people must – can they help?
Doing deals with land owners requires “certainty” for them beyond nutrients
Land owners want to enter into the most advantageous deal
- they need to understand time (land locked in) and money
- and their other options: what is nutrients worth? What is BNG worth?
Interaction with other types of payments and systems. Risk of delay / unforseen consequences
- eg BNG, but also FIPL, and possibly ELMS (if that’s still a thing) and probably other things we don’t even know about
Councils (and others) want to make deals best value
- yes nutrient credits, but also secondary benefits (eg public access) and other stacked environmental credits
Do we understand the business model? is it simple and clear (to landowners especially). Are all the values known?
We want more data, but not much more complexity
There remains a frustrating lack of basic data and lots of it is controlled. We still can’t share maps and models in the public domain because we are told they relate to commercial assets.
People seem to be doing interesting new things not just in the UK but around the world. Thats great, but LPAs not that interested in cutting edge academic research. We’re not here to do a PhD we just want to issue decisions on planning applications. We just want to know: what works?
Protected Site Strategies sound like the future, a more holistic way of thinking about catchments. They might be 3-5 years away – this feels like quite a long time.
Some catchments might need help with governance
Many catchments cross council boundaries, and upper- and lower- tier councils feel the pain in different ways. And, across the whole catchment, mitigation schemes might only be available in some places. It’s slightly awkward to talk about in public, but some catchments might not naturally all pull in the same direction. No names, but some councils might even act in a slightly selfish way.
Who’s job is it to help everyone see the bigger picture, and to establish a more strategic approach? There are some mature river management organisations out there – is that the model we should copy? [by way of background you can see one of my favourite presentations on the governance of the River Wye
https://youtu.be/EYKJnm_mRkA ]
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It was a really good day, and I think everyone being in the same place helped us understand some of the motivations and thinking across the range of organisations that were there. I think there are probably three things that I haven’t been able to let go since the meeting:
1. What is the problem we are trying to solve?
I learned the value of this question from my very first boss at PAS. I think we’ve fudged the question for a while – we talk about mitigation that somehow leads to restoration. Or perhaps, more honestly, mitigation that doesn’t prejudice restoration.
And I get it. Delivering a nutrient mitigation scheme is really really difficult and you risk making your task next to impossible if your goal is restoration. You could be setting yourself up to fail. Perhaps the correct problem we are trying to solve is “just” nutrient mitigation.
And yet, without some eye on the longer term and bigger picture, I worry that we will chew through some big lumps of cash and end up with sites in even worse condition. It annoys me both because I’m mean and also I don’t think it’s good enough.
So many people involved in the Wye crisis, extensive publicity, over a long period of time plus a lot of money pumped into schemes – yet ecological conditions declined & the socioeconomic context of the catchment has been decimated. Why is it so hard to stop the rot & restore? –
Merry Allbright
As a minimum we should understand what “restoration” actually means. We need something to keep us all honest and to ensure we are focused on what makes a difference to the catchment – otherwise its just busywork. I don’t think “just” mitigation feels right, or will look right to a sceptical public. We should be working back from fixing the site condition****.
2. Why do we STILL not have any sensible evidence?
It’s just how planners think. Show me the evidence. Let us consider options. Make some decisions. Monitor what happens. And not just planners – it’s the basics of thinking in systemic terms.
And yet we are unable to share catchments maps and infrastructure (because they belong to the water companies) and we might know some of the WWtW permit levels but we don’t know what is actually going on in the river let alone having some educated guesses why. [there are some exceptions – and growing gang of people just sticking meters into rivers]
I’ve met some really clever people working their socks off with modelling, but even they are left trying to compensate for the lack of data showing what pollution is where.
It is just stupid. Infuriating.
3. Why is it only planning that still seems to be on the hook for this?
This is a bit of a recurring theme of mine, and something I have never really got squared away in my mind properly. In LPAs we operate as “competent authorities” who take their responsibilities under the habitat regulations seriously. We heard in the High Court a few days ago that this is the right thing to do (at least for now – see planoraks for an excellent overview and simonicity for something a bit deeper into the detail).
So – and this is where I need to remind myself and everyone else that I am very very far away from a precise legal mind – why is nobody else playing the competent authority game? The Harris judgement suggests to me that it is incumbent on several other competent authorities to revisit licenses and permits when a natura site is in unfavourable condition, and I’m left wondering why it is only us in the planning world taking this seriously (and not the WFD regulators or the environmental permitting people or lots of other bits of water governance machinery that I don’t understand very well).
* The HBF will tell you they are four years in. At our event we heard from the River Mease catchment who have been going for 13 (!) years, and are on their third version of a strategy.
** Perhaps “felt like” might be more appropriate at the time of writing. It’s really unclear what is going to happen next.
*** There are big cross-overs between this list of things that the local authorities wanted and the sort of things we hear from our BNG network. Let’s have the SAME APPROACH for BNG, nutrients, carbon, tree cover and anything else please.
**** And, importantly, restoration can’t be a simple “make the river like it used to be in the 1950s”. Restoration needs to be a forward looking version reflecting the changing climate.
Planning Advisory Service 