Nearly half of the nature-friendly enhancements promised by developers building new homes have failed to materialise, according to a study of almost 6,000 new houses.
Developers are failing to keep legally binding pledges to boost wildlife when building new homes, according to the survey by University of Sheffield academics for Wild Justice.
When researchers visited 42 completed housing estates in England to check if ecological enhancements including newly planted trees, bird boxes, ponds and hedgerows had been provided as stipulated by planning permissions, they found just 53% had been delivered.
Many specific measures to boost wildlife had not been provided. Thirty-nine per cent of trees detailed on planting plans were missing or dead; 75% of bat and bird boxes were absent; 83% of hedgehog highways had not been provided and researchers could find no evidence of any of the bug boxes detailed in any of the developers’ plans. Nearly half of the native hedges promised did not exist and 60% of the planned wet grassland had not been created.
Labour has vowed to build 1.5m new homes during this parliament and the housing secretary, Angela Rayner, this week suggested that newts and other endangered wildlife were an obstacle to construction that the government would sweep aside.
New biodiversity net gain measures introduced in spring oblige new housing to create 10% more natural habitats than those lost to development, with these regulations implying that a housebuilding boom can occur alongside the government’s legal commitment to halt species decline by 2030.
Kiera Chapman of the University of Sheffield, the lead author of the report, said: “With their recent comments on newts and bat tunnels, Labour are creating a smokescreen based on the idea that there is a conflict between environmental and social goals.
“Our research has shown that developers are not only delivering poor outcomes for wildlife, but also for people. When it comes to priorities, this is not an either/or situation: humans need healthy green spaces to flourish.
“Our report shows that the protections on which the government is relying to deliver biodiversity gains are not working in practice, so that their push for 1.5m homes is likely to cause significant harms to nature.”
Malcolm Tait, a professor of planning at the University of Sheffield and co-author of the report, said: “The government has just announced ambitious housing targets, on the assumption that the planning system can ensure harms to nature are mitigated.
“But our research shows that housebuilders aren’t implementing the ecological enhancements to help nature that they have promised. What we have revealed is a huge, systemic issue and an urgent need for the planning enforcement system to be given the resources it needs to protect wildlife from harm.”
Between June and August 2024, researchers visited 42 new housing estates across five local planning authorities in England, covering more than 291 hectares of land.
Alongside the other absences, the researchers found that 85% of reptile refuges were not present on the ground and 82% of woodland edge seed mixes had failed to materialise.
When wildlife-friendly features had been created, they were often implemented badly: 59% of wildflower grasslands were found to be sown incorrectly or otherwise damaged, leading to far fewer flowers and associated invertebrates than would be expected.
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Chris Packham, the co-founder of Wild Justice, said of housebuilders flouting these rules: “We make laws – they disregard them. They promise us wildlife – we get nothing. They are laughing all the way to the bank – and bankrupting our biodiversity. There’s a human housing shortage, no doubt about that, but if these cheats have their way there will never be any homes for wildlife. It’s time to catch them, fine them or bang them up.”
The least compliant site provided 0% of what had been promised in the plans, while the best new housing estate scored 95%.
The report found the type of developer, size of development or the area of the country made little difference to the actual benefits for nature that were provided.
The report said: “In practice there is effectively very little regulation of developer behaviour in installing measures for ecological mitigation and enhancement. In the worst developments, where a large proportion of ecological mitigation and enhancement measures are missing, it appears that these companies may be gambling that no one will have time to check whether they have met the conditions of their planning permission or not.
“This is particularly worrying as we may be moving towards a system dominated by the political logic that we can urbanise more land at a faster pace by mitigating ecological damage.”
The researchers visited developments in both urban and rural areas at least once, with two researchers walking every street and all publicly accessible areas, checking every tree in each public space and examining every house for bird and bat boxes.
