Corry Review finds fundamental change needed in environmental regulation

Environmental regulation “needs to work in a fundamentally different way, to become a system focused on delivering positive outcomes for nature and the environment and to be an aid not an impediment to sustainable growth”.

So said Dan Corry, who last week made 29 recommendations under five themes when he reported on his Defra-commissioned review of its regulatory landscape. The five themes were: 

• Focus on outcomes, scale and proportionality, with constrained discretion.

• Untangle and tidy ‘green tape’ to ensure process-light and adaptive regulation.

• Deploy a fair and consistent ‘thin green line’ on regulatory compliance, with trusted partners earning autonomy.

• Unlock the flow of private sector green finance to support nature restoration whilst better targeting public sector finance.

• Shift regulators to be more digital, more real-time and more innovative with partners.

Corry found current arrangements had been made in good faith, but time, resource constraints, legal developments, Brexit and climate change had left them inefficient and hard to navigate. While it must protect and enhance the natural world by mitigating human impacts, “we shouldn’t be rigidly protecting everything exactly as it is, at any cost. Our approach must also make ample space for innovation, development and growth,” he said.

Among the recommendations, Corry identified important ones to help growth, nature and people (see below).

Environment secretary Steve Reed welcomed the “strong set of common-sense recommendations for better regulation that will get Britain building,” as part of his wider bid for change. “I am rewiring Defra and its arms-length bodies to boost economic growth and unleash an era of building while also supporting nature to recover,” he said.

Reed added that nine key measures had been fast tracked and work already begun. These included appointing a lead regulator for major projects, revamping green guidance, creating a new Defra Infrastructure Board to boost collaboration within the department, and creating a new industry-funded Nature Market Accelerator to bring coherence to nature markets. 

Corry Review: key actions:

Five actions to help growth

• Recommendation 2: Publish new Strategic Policy Statements for all regulators restating the Government’s priorities and mandating regulators to use constrained discretion to deliver desired outcomes, considering place-based dynamics.

• Recommendation 10: Set up a programme of regulatory sandboxes where regulators are able to waive regulations and measure the results, to facilitate cultural change within environmental regulation to be more positive towards innovation.

• Recommendation 11: Scope a rolling programme of reform for specific regulations (e.g. Habitat Regulations, and Water Framework Directive), focussing on those that can be achieved rapidly.

• Recommendation 3: Establish a Defra Infrastructure Board to accelerate the delivery of significant projects. This should include a rolling forward-looking pipeline of Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects and other projects.

• Recommendation 21: Improve coherence within nature markets and accelerate investment through a Government Nature Market Accelerator.

Five actions to help nature

• Recommendation 1: Introduce and publish a refreshed set of outcomes for regulators, linked to the Environmental Improvement Plan, with a clear accountability framework involving measurable outcomes.

• Recommendation 15: Allow trusted nature conservation and environmental partners and other organisations with good track records greater autonomy, through memoranda of understanding.

• Recommendation 17: More frequent risk-based monitoring, using real-time and digital approaches where possible, with information more accessible to the public.

• Recommendation 18: Tougher penalties for deliberate non-compliance and persistent offenders, for example in the waste sector, with regulators able to issue speedy fines for minor offences.

• Recommendation 23: A six-month sprint, with industry, on removing the barriers to using nature-based solutions to flooding and pollution.

Five actions to help customers and stakeholders

• Recommendation 5: A single lead environmental regulator for every major project (with lead contact), with more co-design of solutions at the outset.

• Recommendation 12: Reform Farming Rules for Water and provide a new approach to slurry application and management to help address diffuse water pollution, creating a circular economy for nutrients and boosting farming productivity.

• Recommendation 13: Review and reform of the permitting system and more use of District Licensing approaches.

• Recommendation 16: More support to ensure compliance via improved access to advice and simplified guidance, alongside higher penalties for repeating offences and those wilfully non-compliant.

• Recommendation 27: Improved technology and transparency to allow customers to see in real-time the progress of their applications, appeals, etc.