CIEEM welcomes debate on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill (PIB) but argues that, even with the Government’s recent amendments, the Bill still weakens environmental safeguards and risks undermining the UK’s commitments to nature recovery and climate resilience. To address these shortcomings, CIEEM has proposed 8 amendments designed to strengthen environmental protections, ensure legal clarity and align development with sustainable planning principles.

• Amendment 1: Apply the mitigation hierarchy (avoid, mitigate, compensate) to Environmental Delivery Plans (EDPs).
• Amendment 2: Make the ‘overall improvement’ test evidence-based and subject to legal challenge, rather than dependent solely on the Secretary of State’s opinion.
• Amendment 3: Require the use of the Super Affirmative Procedure for any use of Henry VIII powers to amend existing legislation.
• Amendment 4*: Environmental features within EDPs must be limited to individual features of protected sites and/or individual protected species, preventing the ‘bundling’ of environmental features into packages that might enable the sacrifice of certain features such as rare species, in circumstances where the overall improvement test would otherwise be applied to the overall bundle of features as a whole.
• Amendment 5: Ensure EDPs are underpinned by robust scientific evidence, baseline data, and environmental principles.
• Amendment 6: Require Natural England to ensure that levy funds actually deliver intended conservation outcomes, not just expenditure.
• Amendment 7: Exclude irreplaceable habitats from EDPs, maintaining their current strong protections.
• Amendment 8: Introduce mandatory buffer zones around irreplaceable habitats to prevent indirect damage from development.

Overall, these amendments aim to ensure that the Bill supports sustainable infrastructure while safeguarding nature, strengthening accountability, and preventing environmental regression.

*To note: This amendment would only be required in circumstances where amendments such as those proposed by Wildlife and Countryside LINK concerning EDPs; Priority amendment 2 (Clause 53), Amendment 4 (replacement of Clause 50) and Amendment 8 (Clause 50, new (2A)) are not taken forward.