Recommendation 49

To address these concerns we recommend that: a) Defra updates its Nature Recovery Network Policy Paper by the end of the year, explaining how LNRS will be co-ordinated into a national Nature Recovery Network and how local authorities should link LNRS to the NRN. b) Government should establish a Nature Recovery Zone category which would enable local authorities to choose to designate areas where planning permission would in principle be granted for environmental investments and discourage new hard infrastructure at scale. LNRS should designate these zones to be incorporated into local plans. c) LNRS should be used as the spatial planning tool to join up biodiversity net gain, ELMS and the planning system. LNRS could provide information for the planning system’s new land zoning proposal and provide the basis for prioritising the delivery of funds from ELMS and net gain. d) The Nature Strategy should set out specifically how the Government proposes to link environmental and planning policies into one coherent policy approach designed to realise the 25 Year Environment Plan’s goal to improve the environment within a generation. e) Amid concerns that some local authorities do not have the capacity to deliver Biodiversity Net Gain and Local Nature Recovery Strategies, we recommend that the Government makes a formal assessment of capacity of local authorities to undertake this work, with a view to ensuring that all local authorities have the capacity to meet these important obligations.