Earlier this week, Government published a new policy paper for England on ensuring that regulation supports economic growth.

The Government posits that the current regulatory landscape is not functioning as effectively as it should and sets out the steps it intends to take, including - inexplicably - to remove reference to the Bat Mitigation Guidelines.

As we have previously highlighted, the core principle behind the Bill – identifying environmental challenges early and addressing them proactively through state-led intervention – could, in theory, be a positive step towards the government’s twin goals of streamlined delivery of critical development and better outcomes for nature.

However, the execution of this concept is critically flawed. As currently drafted, the Bill threatens to cause unnecessary and irreparable ecological harm while simultaneously imposing additional costs, uncertainty and delays on developers due to the uncertainty around the nature and scope of the proposed Environmental Delivery Plans (EDPs).

The proposed Bill, whilst containing some important principles which would be of benefit to both the economy and the environment, is currently significantly flawed and needs an urgent rethink. In our view, the Bill is a regression on current levels of environmental protections.

The Scottish Government’s draft Natural Environment Bill was published on Wednesday 19th February.

The Natural Environment Bill goes alongside the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy and Delivery Plan 2024-2030 published in November 2024 and the Biodiversity Investment Plan. Together these strategies collectively represent Scotland’s overarching Biodiversity Framework and underpin the ambition to halt biodiversity loss and be nature positive by 2030, and to restore and regenerate biodiversity by 2045.