HS2 and the environment

The ‘mitigation hierarchy’ lies at the heart of the Government’s approach to environmental sustainability. At each successive step down the hierarchy, the degree of environmental protection is diminished. The hierarchy should be followed in developing HS2, but the Government has significant work to do to demonstrate that this approach is being applied, given the environmental damage current plans envisage to ancient woodlands, SSSIs and local wildlife sites, and the possible significant harm for particular species affected.

The Government has not been able to establish a full environmental baseline against which the aim of ‘no net biodiversity loss’ can be assessed.

The HS2 biodiversity offsetting metric includes some features which provide additional protections to those envisaged in last year’s Defra Offsetting Green Paper, but unlike the Defra approach it also allows offsetting to be assessed and scored for irreplaceable habitats such as ancient woodlands. The HS2 metric for new habitats rightfully aims to create habitats that would be regarded as achieving ‘good’ condition.

It is right that the HS2 offsetting metric includes a discount factor for time, but the rate proposed does not fully represent the extent of the environmental harm from the potential delays. Some species may become endangered by the hiatus. This is a difficult area to measure because the discount factors usually applied in economic appraisal to recognise the value of time are unlikely to capture the impact of delays for the wildlife affected.

There is a rationale for providing biodiversity compensation along the HS2 route, to facilitate the relocation of the wildlife affected and to provide some compensatory well-being benefits to local people disrupted by the railway and its damage to local landscapes. Nevertheless, the requirement for biodiversity compensation to be provided directly alongside the HS2 route may lead to missed opportunities for better offsetting measures.

The HS2 Environmental Statement, and its associated documents and plans, provide a degree of environmental protection by specifying minimum requirements and standards. There is also a plan to appoint a Complaints Commissioner for construction-related matters. But these measures alone are not enough: HS2 Ltd can avoid adjustments if they are not considered ‘reasonable’ or ‘practicable’ and it has provided no separate budget to meet the cost of environmental protections.

There is some debate about whether HS2 will deliver a reduction in emissions by taking travellers off the roads and planes. But at best, the savings are likely to be relatively small. The carbon footprint of the project hinges on emissions from its construction as well as from the operation of the trains, and that raises issues about striking a balance between minimising emissions and minimising disruption to communities and habitats, for example by using cuttings and tunnels which involve HS2 and the environment 41 greater emissions in construction. Perhaps a bigger issue is the potential effect of the decarbonisation of the generation of the electricity used by the trains; a matter that has been largely absent from the HS2 debate so far.

In the absence of a formal [Strategic Environment Assessment] process for HS2, it is incumbent on the House to keep the scope of the continuing environmental assessment process sufficiently broad, within the ‘principles’ of the Hybrid Bill, to allow full consideration of the environmental impacts of options still available within a project described in the Hybrid Bill as “a high speed railway between London and the West Midlands”. The House will have to ensure that HS2 Ltd does not rely on its ‘practicable and reasonable’ caveat to readily dismiss essential environmental protections.

It is important that if HS2 proceeds, the House is able to demonstrate that it has at least fully followed the purposes and processes to address environmental risks and to prevent or mitigate them that would be expected of any other development of this scale.

On HS2 the Government should aim higher than simply striving for no net biodiversity loss. As it further develops its processes and metrics for biodiversity offsetting, it should seek to weight these to be more likely to produce biodiversity gains and take explicit account of local communities’ well-being.

The HS2 Environmental Statement must be revised to distinguish clearly between ‘mitigation’ and ‘compensation’ measures in respect of biodiversity, and to explain the factors determining in which cases these should be applied. If biodiversity loss is genuinely unavoidable and also cannot be mitigated, compensation measures should be applied to the fullest extent possible.

HS2 Ltd must carry out outstanding environmental surveys as soon as possible. It should focus particularly on cataloguing all ancient woodland and protected animal species, and as much as possible of the 40% of the route yet to be examined by involving local wildlife groups where possible.

Given the uncertainties surrounding the effectiveness of offsetting on HS2, along with the scale of the land to be taken by the project, the [HS2 offsetting] metric should be adjusted wherever possible to encompass the precautionary principle. It should for example only allow offset land to be categorised as ‘good’ condition if there is a fully costed long-term plan for the site’s management and independent monitoring. As Defra are still finalising the standard metric for offsetting, HS2 should look to incorporate any additional learning from these pilots into the metric for this project, to ensure it is robust and reflects best available information.

If the offsetting metric is used to determine compensation for ancient woodlands on the HS2 route, these habitats should receive the maximum score possible on all criteria (distinctiveness, condition and position within ecological networks) to recognise their irreplaceability and to maximise the extent of the offsetting provided. But ancient woodlands should be treated separately from the overall biodiversity ‘no net loss’ calculation.

The Government should commission research on alternative discount factors for the HS2 offsetting metric, to take into account the damage caused by any delays in compensatory habitats reaching maturity.

The Government should re-examine the scope for such off-site biodiversity compensation, taking on board the emerging results from the Natural Capital Committee’s work to strike an appropriate balance between what is best for nature and for the people affected.

The Government should establish a process to monitor all aspects of the environmental protections needed for HS2 for the 60 years following the start of construction and operation of the railway, including biodiversity mitigations, compensations and offsets. This process must be managed by an independent body, HS2 and the environment 43 which should be tasked with monitoring and publicly reporting progress against the ‘no net biodiversity loss’ objective. The Government should also establish detailed costings for monitoring and reporting and for the environmental protections being overseen, and ring-fence those environmental protections and a budget for them separate from the rest of the project.

The Department of Transport and HS2 Ltd should put forward proposals for an emissions monitoring system to help resolve, and bring transparency to, the likely effect of HS2 on overall transport emissions. While the impact of lower maximum train speed on reducing emissions is currently not seen as substantial, the legally binding commitment to reduce emissions makes even a small reduction desirable. HS2 Ltd and the Department should therefore examine the scope for requiring a reduced maximum speed for the trains until electricity generation has been sufficiently decarbonised to make that a marginal issue, and publish the calculations that would underpin such a calculation.

The Government should couch its intended instructions to the Hybrid Bill Select Committee [so as to be able to demonstrate that it has at least fully followed the purposes and processes, to address environmental risks and to prevent or mitigate them, that would be expected of any other development of this scale.] It is vital that, when the HS2 Hybrid Bill is given its Second Reading and referred to the Select Committee to consider petitions, the House’s instructions to it: (i) do not overly constrain the ‘principles’ of the Bill approved at Second Reading. The motion should list only the key fixed features of the project such as terminals in Birmingham and London. This would allow the Select Committee to request information on measures that could avoid, reduce or remedy environmental damage (an EIA process) of potential modifications to the route and its infrastructure and consequential environmental protections that might result, for example, from the trains being required to operate at marginally slower speeds that currently planned. (ii) require it to consider and report on the environmental impacts of the project. Unless the Government or others in the House do so, Members of our Committee intend to table a motion requiring the select committee “to comment and report to the House for its consideration any issue relating to the environmental impact of the railway transport system for which the Bill provides that is raised in a Petition against the Bill, including whether any reasonable or practicable environmental protections and mitigations are not adopted”. As modifications are subsequently introduced, as a result for example of the Higgins report or further environmental surveying, additional instructions to the Select Committee to deal with these should be couched in similar terms.