Ask anyone what makes a place worth living in, and greenery will be near the top of the list. Parks, street trees, ponds … these are not luxuries but essential features of a thriving community. Recent polling by More in Common shows that people care deeply about their local environment as part of having pride in where they live. Like the potholes on our roads, people see the litter in our parks and sewage in our rivers as proof that 'Britain is broken'. [1]
Indeed, the statistics tell a troubling story. New data published in March shows that 1 in 5 lack a green or blue space within a 15-minute walk. The picture is particularly stark in urban areas where access lags significantly behind their rural communities. [2] And England’s most disadvantaged neighbourhoods fall below recommended access levels, with around 97% lacking adequate proximity to green space. [3] These are not abstract figures. They describe real inequalities in who gets to live close to nature, and who does not.
The Government has recognised the problem and committed to solving it. Its Environmental Improvement Plan recommits to ensuring everyone can reach green or blue space within a 15-minute walk from home, and its new towns programme promises nature at the heart of new communities. These are welcome ambitions. But ambitions for greener places require the right policy tools to back them up.
One of the most important of those tools is Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG). Mandatory since 2024, BNG requires new developments to leave nature measurably better off than before. For local authorities, particularly urban ones with stretched budgets and limited green infrastructure, it is a vital funding stream for nature recovery. It channels developer contributions into tangible habitat enhancements, locally in the first instance. It is the mechanism that ensures that building homes doesn't simply mean paving over green space, and instead, helps deliver good quality development communities value.
But BNG is already under strain. Wildlife and Countryside Link's recent analysis reveals that in the policy's first year, 86% of planning applications – large and small - claimed exemptions, with over half using the so-called "de minimis" exemption, which allows developers to self-declare minimal environmental impact with no supporting evidence. [4] A very small (de minimis) impact on nature at a relatively large development site is not credible in more than a tiny number of exceptional circumstances. However, de minimis is being claimed by around 35% of developments over 0.5 ha in size, including those covering several hectares. [6]
Rather than fixing this, the Government risks moving in the opposite direction. At the end of 2025, it announced a new exemption for developments under 0.2 hectares, and a consultation on further exemptions for brownfield residential sites. The stated rationale is proportionality, and there are other refinements that would ensure BNG works for small developers and SME housebuilders. However, blanket exemptions stacked on top of one another are a sledgehammer to crack a walnut, and risk undermining the whole system before it can mature.
If the 0.2 hectares exemption is layered onto the existing de minimis loophole without closing it, analysis suggests that over 90% of eligible developments could avoid BNG altogether, equivalent to an area roughly twice the size of Bristol built with no requirement to create or enhance any habitat. [4] That is not proportionality, it is the gutting of a policy that communities are depending on.
The collective risks of these exemptions will fall hardest on urban areas - where the majority of development is precisely the small sites and brownfield land that exemptions target, and where communities can least afford to lose the green lifeline BNG provides. Without BNG, urban authorities lose a critical source of funding for their Local Nature Recovery Strategies. Green space inequalities, already stark, risk deepening further. And the Government's new towns, many of which incorporate brownfield land, could face the same gap.
None of this is inevitable. If Government wants proportionality, the route is through reform, not exemption: close the de minimis loophole, ensure that any threshold is consistently and simply evidence-based, and give urban authorities the tools to deliver the green places their communities need and deserve. [5]
There is an old adage that housing ministers are judged by what gets built on their watch. For a Government that has staked genuine political capital on pride of place, weakening the very policy that funds greener development would be a costly own goal. The foundations are there. The task now is to build on them, not undermine them.
References
[1] More in Common, Green Spaces and the Public Good (2025): https://www.moreincommon.org.uk/media/gjodfdg5/green-spaces-report-for-uploading.pdf
[2] Defra, Access to Green and Blue Space in England (March 2026): https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/access-to-green-and-blue-space-in-england/access-to-green-and-blue-space-in-england
[3] Analysis finds urban areas in England where no one lives within 15-minute walk of nature, The Guardian (March 2026): https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/mar/04/analysis-finds-urban-areas-england-no-one-lives-within-15-minute-walk-of-nature
[4] Wildlife and Countryside Link, No More Loopholes: Making BNG Work Better for Nature (February 2026): https://wcl.org.uk/docs/BNG_no_more_loopholes.pdf
[5] APPG Outdoors for All, Recommendations to Government on Access to Nature (2025): https://outdoors.inparliament.uk/files/outdoors/2025-09/APPG%20Outdoors%20For%20All%20%20Recommendations%20to%20Government%20on%20Access%20to%20Nature%20online%20%281%29.pdf
[6] Planning Portal, Application System Update: Ensuring Eligibility for the Most Used Biodiversity Net Gain Exemptions (October 2024): https://blog.planningportal.co.uk/2024/10/10/application-system-update-ensuring-eligibility-for-the-most-used-biodiversity-net-gain-exemptions/
