Have your say on how our urban areas are developed for people and nature

Earlier this summer, Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust published its ambitious vision for the county’s urban areas ­— where 90% of us live. ­Writes Erin McDaid of Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust.

Transforming Our Towns And City For People And Nature highlights the inequality of access to nature, the plight of species and people’s desire for change. It also calls on government, planners and politicians to take a nature first approach to planning.

A key pressure facing our urban environment is the seemingly endless pressure for housing and other development.

Here in Nottinghamshire, our county, districts and boroughs face the challenge of finding suitable space for just short of 90,000 homes by 2038. This huge number of houses is on top of huge numbers built over the past couple of decades.

Each time a new allocation of housing comes forward it becomes ever more difficult to find space where everyone is comfortable for homes to be built and can even result in designated wildlife areas coming under threat.

Issues such as the future value of land for nature’s recovery are not really part of the consideration and this needs to change if we are to ever reverse nature’s decline.

Fighting to protect wildlife habitats from development can be a thankless task.

Housing targets place local councils, in their capacity as planning authorities, under extreme pressure to allocate sites. The ‘presumption in favour of sustainable development’ in the National Planning Policy Framework has led to legal challenges from developers seeking to overturn councils’ refusal of planning permission ­— leaving some councils nervous of litigation.

Many planning authorities also no longer have qualified ecologists, making it more difficult for them to properly assess the impact of plans on wildlife.

Resource issues in councils and agencies charged with protecting wildlife, such as Natural England, mean that charities such as Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust are often the last line of defence. We remain the only charity in Nottinghamshire that routinely engages with planning matters across the county, including in urban settings.

Given the pressure for development and inherent weaknesses in the system, it often feels like a losing battle, but sense does sometimes prevail.

A recent appeal judgment, upholding Mansfield District Council’s decision to refuse planning permission for 204 dwellings at Gregory Quarry, gives a glimmer of hope that development will be prevented where it can be shown that it will damage wildlife and their habitats.

Although not legally protected, planners have to take the wildlife value into account in decisions.

In this case it was clear the housing and associated infrastructure, including an access road, would have been devastating for nature.

The fact that the areas had been designated as vital ‘green infrastructure’ in the Local Plan meant that the proposal conflicted the overall aims of the plan and could therefore not be consider as sustainable development.

In addition to the robust defence from Mansfield District Council and our own objection, pressure from residents and campaigners passionate about the importance of the wildlife areas including Quarry Lane Local Nature Reserve made a real difference.

When wildlife is under threat, we need people to speak up.

Right homes, right place

We recognise that people need homes and you won’t be surprised to hear that everyone at the trust lives in a house.

We are not ‘anti’ housing or people having access to affordable homes.

Not all housing development need damage wildlife, but planning should be about more than simply what can be built where. It should be about creating places where people and communities can thrive ­— and to thrive, communities need access to nature.

By designing in harmony with local surroundings, working with nature and constructing sustainable carbon neutral or carbon positive homes, good development can help create wilder places where people aspire to live.

Have your say

As well as outlining the issues facing our urban areas, Transforming Our Towns And City For People And Nature also highlights ways in which we can all make a difference by taking helping to care for or create wildlife habitats or by speaking out against damaging development.

As we’ve seen recently with the local success of the Stop The Chop campaign to save the trees next to Newark Library, local action can make a difference.

To find out how you can take action for nature where you live visit Nottinghamshire Wildlife website.