DEFRA Environmental Improvement Plan highlights need to properly fund regulators

DEFRA have published their Environmental Improvement Plan, the plan reinforces Prospect’s call for proper funding of environmental regulators. Prospect Senior Deputy General Secretary Sue Ferns said:

This plan confirms what we already know: that safeguarding our natural environment and protecting against future environmental risks should be at the heart of the Government’s ambitions to achieve economic growth.

“There is not a binary choice between the environment and growth. Current delays in planning approvals are frequently the result of the insufficient resourcing of environmental regulators, and contrary to the unhelpful rhetoric, these regulators are builders not blockers, and must be properly resourced after years of underfunding.

“Before the Autumn budget, a coalition of trade unions and environmental NGOs wrote to the Chancellor urging her to properly fund regulators so that they can work with businesses to quickly approve developments while protecting our natural environment, noting the significant support this proposal has amongst members of the public according to recent polling.

“Today’s plan setting out the scale of the challenge the Government face to protect and improve our natural environment only reaffirms the vital importance of the work carried out by environmental regulators, and the urgent need to properly resource them to achieve economic growth whilst tackling the climate crisis.”