Growth at any cost: What the Planning and Infrastructure Bill gets wrong

It’s not long since everyone hated developers. At the time of our first issue of this magazine six years ago, I was told by a stalwart in PR that “developers are carnivores – they can smell blood and will chase profit at any cost.”

 

“They can’t help it,” he said. “It’s just the way they’re made.”

 

The vilification of the property industry is a tactic by politicians in need of a scapegoat for inaction, a lack of investment in social infrastructure and ineffective policy.

 

Who else to blame for the growing crisis in affordable housing, the forced displacement of council housing tenants, gentrification and a widening rich-poor divide?

 

Not to say that criticism isn’t warranted – the built environment industry has been complicit in, and profited from, failures of humanity and governance such as those leading up to the Grenfell tragedy. Making money from skyrocketing rents and service charges at a time of increasing homelessness is also not a good look. Not to mention all the carbon emissions during a climate emergency.

 

But its reputation as social pariah has proved an effective driver of change for professionals who care about the planet and what people think of them – and who doesn’t? The shape of the industry has been morphing at speed, helping to attract and retain talent, and led by a small yet influential crop of enlightened industry disruptors.

 

 

The emergence of these new, diverse and inclusive, prosocial and environmental players in property is exciting. Their growth is enabled by public-sector partnerships, funding tied to positive environmental, social and governance outcomes, long-term investors and the need to win over both the public and the planning departments.

 

Change continues apace with innovation being driven from the top down and the bottom up. There is alignment on net zero and decarbonisation from major players, from The Crown Estate to small and entrepreneurial B-Corp developers and property start-ups.

 

There’s also an increasing appetite for experimentation. Pilot projects are far more common today than they used to be – test sites for trials in material use and reuse, climate-resilient plantings, regenerative architecture, co-design and meaningful community engagement. Knowledge is being shared. Developers from British Land to Hastings Commons have been celebrated in The Pineapples awards this year for radical projects making a positive social impact. Their stories make for inspiring reading

 

These sparks should be fanned into flames by government, fuelling ethical entrepreneurship and good growth. But what’s happening instead is more than disappointing: Cuts to environmental protections; a race to the bottom instead of the top.

 

 

Labour seems genuinely befuddled that none of its announcements has been greeted by the property industry with applause, revealing the its failure to read the room. Like a teenager trying to be popular, you can almost smell the desperation.

 

What it has missed is a curious fact of these polarised times – left or right, we broadly agree on three key issues: the need for government to invest in social infrastructure including the NHS; the need for more affordable housing; and the preservation and enhancement of nature.

 

Don’t believe me? Check the numbers. We are surprisingly united. Based on the 2019 election, 71 per cent of Conservative voters and 82 per cent of Labour voters said the UK needed more social housing, according to a YouGov poll in 2023.

 

And while climate change is a divisive topic, nature is not. A YouGov survey on rewilding in March 2025 showed strong support for the reintroduction of animals that have become extinct. Based on voting in the 2024 general election, 71 per cent of Reform UK voters, 76% of Conservative voters and 82 per cent of Labour voters are in favour of releasing animals into the wild to bring back species such as beavers and elk. 

 

As for the NHS, a running YouGov survey on sectors for which the UK government should increase spending ranks the NHS as the top choice for all Britons, with Conservative voters 65 per cent in favour and Labour at 78 per cent.

 

 

Labour could be spurring developers to seek out win-win opportunities to boost affordable housebuilding while enhancing nature and increasing spending on health and wellbeing, Instead, it is pitting one of these issues against the other two. Want investment in housing and social care? We’ll need nature to pay the price as well as cuts to social welfare. This, alongside curtseys to the Trump presidency, has made for a depressing 2025 so far.

 

Despite the government’s assertions to the contrary, the Planning and Infrastructure Bill is pushing for growth at any cost – and nature is set to pay the price.

 

Chancellor Rachel Reeves proudly spoke of “reducing the environmental requirements placed on developers … so they can focus on getting things built and stop worrying about bats and newts.”

 

Suddenly developers are being cast as bloodthirsty bat-killers again, lining their pockets at the expense of the poor newts, the government appeasing their unholy lust to get homes built at any price. 

 

The government has since admitted that there is no evidence that environmental protections are a blocker to development in their own impact assessment.

 

Meanwhile, more than 40 climate experts and former government advisers, the government’s own Office for Environmental Protection, the Environmental Audit Committee and a raft of other agencies and institutions have spoken out against Part 3 of the Planning Bill’s undermining of environmental protections in England, which will not apply in Scotland or Wales.

 

Professor David Hill CBE, former deputy chairman of Natural England, says: “I cannot believe we have come to this position. Under the watch of previous governments, the debate had always been around how far we should progress to increase protection and funding for nature and green growth. Now, regressive laws are being quietly accelerated through Parliament with no public consultation, impact assessments or pilots.

 

Described as a “license to kill”, the bill lets developers pay into a nature recovery fund as compensation for environmental destruction. This is expected to deliver significant and permanent biodiversity loss and irreversible damage to wildlife and habitats before mitigation can take effect. Imagine paying a levy before felling the Sycamore Gap Tree. 

 

In its current form, it will also slow the economy for several important reasons – it undermines the fledgling nature markets, injects fresh uncertainty into the process (an investment risk) and slows development down simply by moving the goalposts. 

 

Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta, author of the HM Treasury-commissioned Dasgupta Review on the economics of biodiversity, says this will profoundly undermine “the core value and purpose of nature markets, which is to halt and reverse the decline of nature, not accelerate it.

 

 “Part III of the bill will cause economic harm by introducing overlapping and clashing nature laws and slowing development with complex viability-based levy systems that critically undermine the investment case for nature,” he says.

 

In short, this will accelerate nature’s decline in the name of property development. Who wants that on their shoulders?

 

The question is whether developers and the wider property industry will stand against what is being done in their name – if not for the barn owls and swifts, then for their own reputation. 

 

For years, local authorities, developers and architects have been working hard to rebuild trust with communities. We’ve learned that clearcutting nature brings the whole industry into disrepute and triggers a howling public as they see habitats destroyed on their doorstep in the name of progress.

 

We’ve also learned that fresh investment can be found when you prioritise nature and the social good.  

We have worked hard to find other ways of doing. The result is a built environment industry that we can be proud to be a part of – with leaders striving to deliver, sometimes with compromise and at the expense of some profit, a positive legacy for future generations. 

 

Success is no longer solely measured in £ per sq ft but in the quality, social impact and sustainability of what we build. Now we just need the government to wake up. 

 

As Hill says: “The Planning and Infrastructure Bill harms our economy, rather than helps it, and will deliver a profoundly unacceptable blow to our natural environment, which, unlike the economy, may never recover.”

 

---

This article appears in the print edition of The Developer, buy it now or become a proud supporter and get every issue delivered to your office with your organisation thanked on the inside cover