Recommendation 15

HM Government · verbatim extract Accepted

We agree that the monitoring of farm pollution and its impact on the water environment is important. The Environment Agency regularly carries out extensive modelling and monitoring of the water environment to detect nutrient flows across catchments, alongside trends in other existing and emerging pollutants. This monitoring and modelling would be used to help measure progress in achieving our proposed legally binding long term environmental target to reduce phosphorus, nitrogen and sediment pollution from agriculture by 40% by 2037. Alongside this, we plan to develop a national inventory showing the inputs used in the modelling to ensure transparency and accountability. The Government is concerned by the stalling effect of nutrient neutrality on new housebuilding and the planning system. We will focus on reducing pollution at source as a priority, to ensure that sites can be recovered, as well as supporting sustainable development in catchment areas affected. The Government agrees that planners should understand risks to the water environment when considering granting permissions, but care should be taken in balancing the role of different public bodies in managing pollution risks. DLUHC have provided Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) with funding for a catchment officer to help identify nutrient mitigation to allow development to continue, and Natural England are proactively working with LPAs to ensure mitigation is appropriate and sufficient. We must ensure that planning authorities are not required to consider matters outside of their expertise or expected to become involved in regular farm management activities that could place a heavy additional burden on the planning system. The relevant regulator in this case is the Environment Agency.