Government rejects several select committee recommendations on housebuilding and nature

The Environmental Audit Committee made 37 recommendations in total in November 2025 in a report which said measures in the Planning and Infrastructure Act were not enough to allow the Government to meet both its environmental and housebuilding targets.

The report also warned, among other things, that severe skills shortages in ecology, planning and construction could put Whitehall’s housebuilding ambitions at risk.

At the time, the committee said that it believed that the Government could achieve its house building target of 1.5 million new homes this Parliament and meet its environmental, nature and climate change targets, "if it addresses the issues we identify and gives serious consideration to our recommended solutions".

The Government has now rejected a number of the recommendations put forward by the committee, including a call for the creation of 'ecological resource hubs', which would give resource-stretched councils access to qualified ecologists and environmental planners.

In its response published on Friday (13 March), the Government said that recent investments in local government planning capacity and the existence of a 'Planning Capacity and Capability Programme' meant that a separate ecological resource hub would be unnecessary.

Elsewhere, responding to the committee’s concerns about the “weak” impact assessment for the Nature Restoration Fund (NRF), the Government claimed that “numerous legislative safeguards” will ensure that the NRF’s implementation is “robustly monitored”.

It said it will bring forward regulations setting out the approach Natural England should take to prioritise different types of conservation measures.

However, the Government rejected the committee’s recommendation to publish evidence of specific environmental improvements to sites when the mitigation hierarchy has not been applied.

Elsewhere, the Government rejected a recommendation that major developers should submit whole-life carbon assessments as part of planning applications. The committee said these should be mandatory for all major developments, as defined in the NPPF.

The Government said it did not agree with this proposal, but noted that it had previously committed to updating the Planning Practice Guidance to assist local authorities in considering carbon emissions within the plan-making process.

The Government also pushed back on a recommendation to commission a review into council tax, stamp duty and any other tax policies to consider the merit of offering lower band taxation for homes with lower levels of embodied carbon.

In its response, it said it does not plan to review council tax on the basis of embodied carbon, adding that councils "already have the power to provide discretionary council tax reductions where they consider this appropriate".

The committee also recommended that the Government partner with professional bodies to accelerate the training of early career ecologists through a pathway similar to that of the Government's planning programme. This proposal was rejected by the Government, which said it did not consider a separate pathway for ecologists "necessary".

The Government meanwhile said it remains committed to the Biodiversity Net Gain policy and wants to make the process simpler for smaller developers, adding that its proposals to exempt small sites up to 0.2 hectares will ensure the policy can meet the country’s needs for both housing and nature recovery. It plans to publish an implementation timeline for these plans “shortly”.

Responding to the Government, the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, Toby Perkins MP, said: “Growing the economy must go hand in hand with protecting and restoring nature and the environment. I’m therefore pleased to see the Government’s commitment to a ‘win-win’ solution for nature and development, and to Biodiversity Net Gain, a policy that many regard as pioneering.

"But the Committee is concerned that the Government has rejected recommendations which we believe would have increased transparency and given greater confidence about its ability to achieve these twin aims. We are disappointed that the Government has rejected our recommendations to establish ecological resource hubs – a critical element of the skills challenge in planning – and to mandate whole-life carbon assessments.”

Adam Carey