The National Audit Office has reported this morning that:
It is now nine years since government first set an ambition for this to be the first generation to improve the natural environment in England, and there is still a long way to go before government can be confident that it has the right framework to deliver on its aspirations and ensure value for money from the funding it has committed to environmental projects. The NAO recognises that the demands of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic over the past six months have slowed the momentum it had started to develop, but progress was already slower than government had intended. Environmental issues are broad, inter-related and complex, so these are not straightforward challenges to address, but government needs to pick up the pace if it is to improve the natural environment within a generation.
You might think they do not care. You might be right.
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waiting on your government on any thing it promises to do is futile,you wouldn,t send boris to the shop without a note, worst government in my life time and apparently these people had the best education money can buy.
Natural England has been gutted over the last few years to make it the poodle of government cronies, like the shooting set and property developers. Environmental activists held out high hopes for the latest Agriculture bill after Gove spoke a good game about replacing EU subsidies with more support for environmental measures. Believe it when I see it. Our natural environment is in the worst state ever although there are some bright spots which the government can’t take credit for. Can’t see how anyone can believe any of the claims this government and its leader make about anything.
I wonder if we are missing a trick or two? Whilst in the EU one of our main problems was not trying to understand the rules of play, such that we failed to take advantage of laws that could help achieve desired outcomes.
As an example: there is a duty on a landowner to reinstate any hedges that are lost/destroyed – locally nothing much gets done about this, but I wonder if it could?
Likewise, I wonder if other existing legislation provides the means to ‘encourage’ landowners to do ‘the right thing’.
Small beer, I know, but public sentiment could improve compliance in these areas. The government won’t do anything to upset e.g. the shooting lobby, but it may bow to public pressure. I understand that certain people can influence much via Twitter; perhaps now is the time for that influence to be more useful.
People like Chris Packham try
He gets death threats for it
Indeed, he get all that abuse and meanwhile the courts are failing to protect the environment (HS2)