Cheshire Wildlife Trust welcomes the passing of the Environment Act, which will help the Government make significant progress in tackling the climate and nature crises. The Wildlife Trusts have campaigned for this bill for more than three years and are pleased to see it receiving Royal Assent in its current, much-strengthened form.

The inclusion of a legally-binding wildlife abundance target has the potential to boost efforts to reverse the decline in wildlife and will put the UK on the path towards protecting 30% of land and sea for nature by 2030. The new requirement for planning applications to provide Biodiversity Net Gain will encourage developers to put nature at the heart of their work, whilst Local Nature Recovery Strategies will create the framework for a national system of interconnected sites for nature.

Yet, the Trust emphasises that this is far from a world-leading piece of legislation. Plans for the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) were improved by ministers, but the Secretary of State now has the ability to provide the OEP with “guidance” – even where cases affect ministers themselves – which prevents the new watchdog from being fully independent. The Government resisted all efforts to put legally binding interim targets within the Act and the duty for local authorities to follow Local Nature Recovery Strategies plans is weak.

James Melling, the Trust’s Campaigns Officer said:

‘From lobbying local MPs to thousands of people signing our petitions to Parliament, so much effort has gone into making the Act what it is today. It is disappointing to see it fall short of the ‘world-leading’ laws that were promised but, without the overwhelming backing from our supporters, this Act would have been much weaker.

Although this Bill has now passed, there are still plenty of laws and policies that we need to influence that will give stronger protection for our environment. We’ll be campaigning for a Wildbelt designation once the planning reforms return to parliament and we’ll continue to challenge the emergency use of bee-killing pesticides should they be allowed again like we saw in January.

We’re also calling on our councils to step up their efforts to restore nature, particularly now there is a duty for them to consider nature recovery strategies. That duty might not be a strong as we hoped but we’ll be reminding all our councils that it is there and that they must follow it if they want to see nature thriving again. Three of our eight councils have now declared nature emergencies and we want to see the rest follow suit and make that same commitment to nature’s recovery.’

People can call on their council declare a nature emergency by signing the Cheshire Wildlife Trust petition: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/declare-a-nature-emergency