Council leaders have used a Downing Street summit to urge No10 to break the deadlock in a dispute over nutrient neutrality.
South Norfolk DC leader John Fuller, who was among those who attended the meeting with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s advisers, blamed a ‘turf war’ between the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs for the fact that, as of March 2022, housing development has effectively stalled on 14% of England’s land area.
Advice from conservation agency Natural England means developers can only receive planning permission if they offset the impact of extra sewage from new homes, creating a major barrier to the Government’s ambition of delivering 300,000 homes per year by the mid-2020s.
Cllr Fuller accused Natural England of ‘passing the buck onto hapless planning committees,’ adding: ‘Nobody wants to see rivers polluted but not building houses isn’t cleaning them up.’
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