The Corry Review recommends a number of changes to the way environmental regulation operates, in a bid to pull off that long elusive political grail: A system of governance that works for both growth and the environment. It needn’t be an either/or choice, of course, but designing a legislative framework in which the two aspirations support each other seems to have proven elusive for a succession of governments since that of David Cameron.
Titled Delivering Economic Growth and Nature Recovery: An Independent Review of Defra’s Regulatory Landscape, the 64-page document, produced by economist Dan Corry, sets out 29 recommendations intended to have “a system level impact”, and achieve the aims suggested by the review’s title.
Notably, on this issue, Kier Starmer has previously attempted to strike a bullish tone on “Nimbys and zealots”, which has generated some thoughtful push back. The Corry Report certainly seems to advance a more cautious ethos, with assurances of “holding back at this stage from major institutional change in terms of the boundaries of the regulators,” but with seemingly decisive efforts to clear away obstacles to development.
We do need to prioritise the environment, the document seems to explain, in various ways, “[b]ut in mitigating our impacts, we shouldn’t be rigidly protecting everything exactly as it is, at any cost,” says an early passage. “Our approach must also make ample space for innovation, development and growth.”
Licensing and permitting is one aspect of this, with Defra considered to be “too slow and lacking in transparency”. With regulation, it seems to be a case of too much in places – with some stakeholders struggling to navigate regulations of Byzantine complexity (notably farmers) – but also too little elsewhere, with the scale and urgency of the waste crime problem, for example, necessitating a readier willingness to wield the stick.
The “thin green line”
Corry recommends that greater autonomy be afforded to trusted conservation groups and environmental partners, with the judicious use of memoranda of understanding (MOUs) and ‘class licences’, which should be deployed more widely, “enabling [stakeholders] to move fast on restoring nature without applying to regulators for multiple permissions.” And this will require developing precise and consistent criteria for the conferring of such freedoms, which should include consideration of the organization’s track record in things like “organisational compliance and positive real-world impact”.
Similarly, the review recommends expediting existing progress with updating the permitting regulations “to allow regulators more flexibility to take sensible, risk-based decisions”. This has a bearing especially on “supporting net-zero and circular economy priorities”. Examples include: facilitating the development of low carbon industrial infrastructure, and ensuring remediated soil is not unnecessarily categorised as waste.
Fluid strategies
Some regulations seem to positively hamper efforts to improve the environment, and legal difficulties appeared irresolvable with Wessex Water’s attempt to provide an NBS storm overflow last year, although the utility was commended for its decision to proceed with the plans anyway. Such anomalies appear to be addressed by a recommendation in the review that nature-based solutions might be allowed to dispense with their current requirement for full planning permission. In other words, to no longer require the same level of permission as other types of infrastructure, and thereby circumvent some of these barriers of time and cost. “Defra should conduct a six-month sprint, with industry, on removing the barriers to using NBS to flooding and pollution.” The barriers include things like planning, benefit-to-cost ratios, and biodiversity net gain. It should “propose a way of reducing or removing these,” says the review.
“A bonfire of regulations is not the way forward,” says the document at another point, in a section about untangling ‘green tape’. Rather, Corry outlines a programme of streamlining and modernising to ensure regulations are “relevant to [Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP)] targets, fit for the future and provide discretion to deliver good outcomes for nature and growth in a place”.
The lack of uniformity in guidance between different regulators is one problem with things as they stand, and the review recommends publishing new Strategic Policy Statements for all regulators, ensuring consistency across them all.
One area of confusion that incurs an environmental cost at present is slurry application and storage, and the document recommends reform here “to help address diffuse water pollution, creating a circular economy for nutrients and boosting farming productivity.”
Outdated IT has been a flashpoint of criticism of regulators in recent times, which the review doesn’t overlook with its recommendation that they undergo a shift to become “more digital, more real-time and more innovative with partners”.
The quest for ‘smarter’ and ‘leaner’ regulation
Penny Simpson, Environmental Law Partner at law firm Freeths, attempted to place the report in context: “The fundamental problem with modern economies is that good intentions to try to address problems as they emerge can, over the long run, lead to a steady accretion of rules and regulations which stifle innovation.”
“Successive Governments as they take office have tried, and largely failed, to address this issue and this Government is no exception. The Corey Review is just the latest in a long list of attempts at implementing ‘smarter’ and ‘leaner’ regulatory frameworks.”
Key to the likely success of this attempt, she said, would be whether it “recognises the importance of a high integrity and appropriately governed private nature market which can successfully attract investment and thereby grow.”
Indeed the report recommends that Defra explore launching “a Nature Market Accelerator to bring much needed coherence to nature markets and accelerate investment’”.
“It’s not clear what this means but it sounds encouraging,” she said, adding that, when it comes to environmental regulation, “it is tempting, but fundamentally wrong headed, to adopt an ‘either/or’ approach between growth or the environment”.
“Rather, if the Government wants a sustainable and flourishing economy and society it is essential that it adopts a ‘both/and’ approach, whereby we energetically and wholeheartedly invest in both the best developments our country badly needs as well as in the ecosystems and healthy environment critical to ensuring our society is sustainable.
“One of the best ways of achieving this is for Government to help create high-integrity, well-functioning nature markets. Doing this will ensure that as we invest in new development we are also investing in the ecosystems and natural capital assets necessary to ensure that those developments are sustainable.
“We do however need a clear strategy for nature markets from the Government and we are not getting that from the Planning and Infrastructure Bill’s Part 3 on Nature Recovery, where the role of private nature markets is left distinctly unclear. We need amendments to the Bill which bring the two strategies together more coherently into a joined-up approach.”
The review makes clear that it is concerned with improving how the regulatory system operates in the short term, while indicating a direction of travel for securing other changes in the long term.
