With the government’s aim of building 1.5 million new homes within the timescale of the current parliament, the availability of nutrient mitigation credits will be a key to many local authorities’ ability to deliver new homes. Local authorities around the Solent have been grappling with accommodating the concept of nutrient neutrality for some years since it was introduced in 2018 – and strike a balance between the need to protect our precious natural habitats with an urgent demand for new homes. At that time, and with no obvious means for developers to secure the nutrient neutrality for new development, local planning authority planning consents risked grinding to abrupt halt. Through the Partnership for South Hampshire, local authorities sought to find a solution.
The Partnership for South Hampshire (PfSH) is a membership body of eleven local authorities around the Solent, with aims to improve the environmental, cultural, and economic performance of the South Hampshire area. Formed in 2003, the partnership is a great example of local authorities, local partners and government agencies working together across local authority boundaries on issues of common interest. As a unified group, PfSH local authorities lobbied central government throughout 2019 and 2020, to seek recognition of the impact of the nutrient neutrality in blocking the progress of new housing development, and for it to give some serious thought to providing resources to address it. As a collective, PfSH provided the mechanism to voice of the Solent’s local authorities’ concerns, as what was originally a more local issue, became a national one.
Through a combination of lobbying, national recognition of the impact of the nutrient neutrality issue by central government and with the help of partners like the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust, PfSH was able to develop the Solent Mitigation Partnership as a means of paving the way for much needed new homes, alongside protecting our prized natural habitats.
