Published 9th January 2025

New proposals for the planning regime must demonstrate benefits for protected species like the great crested newt, says ARC’s Conservation Director, Jim Foster.

You may have noticed a disturbing pattern of media stories denouncing great crested newts, starting around last summer. I won’t recount all of them here; in short, some developers and politicians see newts as a hindrance to new development. Most notably, the Deputy Prime Minister and even the Prime Minister name-checked newts in public comments, and not in a good way.

This isn’t new. In a blog from June 2020, I lamented similar reasoning deployed by a previous Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. “Newt counting delays” were hobbling economic development, he claimed. I disagreed, as did many others. An unexpected side-note is that Mr Johnson appears to have had second thoughts, and praised newts energetically in his Daily Mail column, whilst decrying their plight. “[Britain] should be heaven for newts — and yet we human beings have turned it into something approaching hell,” he wrote in August 2023. There’s more backstory on this about-turn, but I’ll leave that for others to discuss. For a while after, the media seemed to get tired of newt counting stories, perhaps distracted by the new national past-time of counting Prime Ministers.

Alas we now seem to be back in “newt negative” territory. My sense is that it’s the political imperative behind house-building and infrastructure improvement that is driving this. Or rather, it’s a distorted and poorly evidenced view that great crested newts are a significant blocker on construction. Worse, in some respects, is the fallacy that this means there is a binary choice between newts and people.

Now, I should emphasise here that sometimes the media itself must take some blame for the unhelpful messaging. Looking at the full texts of politicians’ comments, they often say the right things about needing to ensure nature is protected alongside economic growth. Yet news stories tend not to cover that more rounded view, plumping instead for the simple “newts getting in the way” angle. Having said that, it’s pretty clear from some politicians’ phrasing that newts feel a lower priority, so I can appreciate how this happens. When the Sunday Times [paywall] interviewed me last year about what seemed a rather meritless “newts vs development” uproar, I was pleasantly surprised by the coverage they devoted to voices asserting that newts weren’t really the problem.

In that June 2020 blog I referenced various studies clearly demonstrating that protected species are not the blocker on development that some make them out to be. There are other factors at play that eclipse any issues caused directly by newts and their legal protection. In the four and a half years since then, I’ve not seen any compelling evidence to the contrary. Indeed recent analysis shows that only a tiny fraction of planning applications affects newts. And there are signs that a strategic approach to licensing development impacts seems to be having the intended effect of simplifying regulation whilst generating good outcomes for newts.

So will 2025 be a Happy Newt Year? Or is it more a case of no newts is good news, for some?

Activity over recent months indicate major changes could be on the cards. For example, the Environmental Audit Committee is conducting an inquiry into “Environmental sustainability and housing growth”. Most interestingly though, just before Christmas, Defra and the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government released a working paper on “Development and Nature Recovery”. It proposes a radical change to the way that biodiversity impacts are handled in planning, largely doing away with site-level surveys and impact assessment, instead relying on larger scale strategic approaches implemented by the state and funded by a developer levy. The paper is a real curate’s egg, with some appealing suggestions mixed with plenty of unattractive or ambiguous ones. The proposals beg some fundamental questions, such as the role of developer funding vs state funding in nature recovery. We will be engaging with government to explore which avenues are worth pursuing, and where the ideas don’t stack up. The government is required under section 19 of the Environment Act 2021 to have due regard to five core environmental principles, including that the “polluter pays”. I think those principles are a good framework for assessing the merits or otherwise in these new proposals.

Discussing substantial reform is all well and good, but I worry that in doing so government might neglect the more immediate operational problems, for which solutions are more straightforward. I’d like to see more emphasis on enhancing the infrastructure and skills in planning departments and agencies. Many Local Authorities struggle with capacity and capability when it comes to their biodiversity functions; often over-stretched and under-resourced, many are not keeping up with their biodiversity commitments. I’d also like to see more join-up between the myriad initiatives now interfacing with planning, and an end to government’s aversion to creating or endorsing guidance for species.

Few people in my sector would argue that current land use planning systems work well for reptiles and amphibians, though the introduction of District licensing for great crested newts shows that it is possible to make substantial positive changes. It would be great to think that with all the current attention, we can encourage government to get planning and associated processes working much better for nature. At ARC, our focus will be ensuring that any new ideas really do constitute an improvement for reptiles and amphibians.

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Photo captions: 

Great crested newt trap used for surveying. Photo: Jim Foster/ARC

Newts feature on road signs in this new development. Photo: Jim Foster/ARC