Ditching Biodiversity Safeguards to Build Houses
The UK government has quietly but significantly revised its approach to environmental regulation, turning what was once a progressive requirement into a potential loophole for developers.
On Tuesday (16 December 2025) The Guardian reported that Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook has announced a rewrite of the ‘Biodiversity Net Gain’ (BNG) policy, exempting new housing developments on sites smaller than 0.2 hectares from the rule that previously required every development to deliver 10 per cent more nature than it destroyed.
While ‘small sites’ make this change sound like it might not make much of a difference, small sites make up the majority of planning applications at around 60%. Rolling back protections for them undermines the spirit of what the Conservatives and Reform politicians claimed that post‑Brexit UK environmental policy was supposed to achieve. BNG was introduced after long campaign pressure to embed nature restoration into everyday planning, recognising that biodiversity and community green space are not luxuries, but essentials for health, climate resilience, and local quality of life.
This change translates into fewer hedgerows, fewer wildflower meadows, less tree cover, and weaker protection for habitats like ponds and meadowlands that soak up floodwater and host pollinators. Environmental groups, from The Wildlife Trusts to the RSPB, have criticised the move as blowing a hole in the UK’s nature recovery commitments, warning that without safeguards in small developments many hundreds of hectares of potential habitat gains will simply vanish.
The Green Party is clear that ecological health and social infrastructure must be built hand in hand. That means maintaining strong biodiversity safeguards for all developments, investing in brownfield regeneration rather than greenfield sprawl, and embedding green infrastructure such as parks, pollinator corridors, and sustainable drainage systems into community planning. These measures enhance people’s lives, reduce flood risk, clean the air, and support healthy, connected neighbourhoods.
By weakening BNG exemptions the current government, pursuing the deregulation instincts of the Right and pressure from industry to cut “red tape”, sends a message that environmental laws are disposable when they conflict with immediate development targets. This fits a broader pattern with signalled willingness to scale back net‑zero measures, including proposals to repeal climate commitments and slash clean vehicle mandates, framing them as burdensome on businesses and consumers. Reform goes further in rejecting climate targets outright. Such deregulatory approaches may seem appealing to developers and investors, but they externalise the environmental costs onto communities and future generations.
A compassionate, progressive government strategy would recognise that thriving ecosystems and thriving communities are two sides of the same coin. If the UK is serious about both building houses and safeguarding its natural heritage then weakening biodiversity protections is the very definition of a false economy. This is why it’s vital that we get more Greens into power where these decisions are made.