What’s in the Autumn Budget for nature?
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has today set out the UK Government’s Autumn Budget.
There was nothing in her speech to the House of Commons specifically on nature, although she did mention an initial investment of £3.9 billion in green hydrogen and CCS (carbon capture and storage) in 2025-26. This investment is intended to kickstart these two particular elements of the Government’s green economy and decarbonisation transition.
However, if you delve into the 170-page budget report, there is some good news for nature.
Straight up there is £400 million allocated to fund peatland restoration and tree-planting across 2024-25 and 2025-26. Government will also invest £2.4 billion over two years in flood resilience. Hopefully this latter amount will include nature restoration for its water retention and flood attenuation benefits, but the budget document does say that this is for “building” and “maintaining” flood defences.
Delve a little deeper and you’ll see that the Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (Defra) has had its capital budget increased to £7.5 billion in 2025-26, representing a 2.7% increase. On the face of it this is a good thing, but the majority of this funding will be going towards supporting the transition to more productive and sustainable farming (£5 billion) and flood protection (£2.4 billion). There isn’t any further detail about how the remaining money will be allocated, and unfortunately the resource budget has been reduced, with likely impacts on Natural England and the biodiversity-related elements of the Environment Agency and Forestry Commission.
There is £58 million across two years for research and innovation in support of climate resilience and net zero goals. As this is from the Defra budget (and not the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero) we can hope this has a nature-related element to it.
Infrastructure and housing development, which includes boosting nature recovery, is allocated £70 million in 2025-26. This includes £14 million for the Nature Restoration Fund to offset the environmental impact of development, with a developer contribution, and £13 million to expand Protected Sites Strategies in priority areas.
Local government too get an increase in funding with an increase up to £14.3 billion, including £1.3 billion in new grant funding. This is a 3.2% increase for local government. We can only hope that some of this funding finds its way into supporting the biodiversity and ecology functions within Local Authorities.
The national governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are all getting more money as well (£47.7 billion, £21 billion and £18.2 billion respectively), with some of this hopefully finding its way into nature recovery spending.