'Home building just a tiny fraction of what's causing county's environmental problems'

SMALL house-builders in Somerset are still struggling to deliver new homes as a result of the “catastrophic” phosphates crisis.

- DANIEL MUMBY Local democracy journalist

Under the Dutch N court ruling, and Natural England’s ensuing legal advice published in August 2020, any new development within the Somerset Levels and Moors catchment area must include additional mitigation to prevent any net increase in phosphates.

This decision originally held up around 18,000 homes across Somerset, with developers scrambling to agree solutions with the various local authorities solutions ranging from fallowing agricultural land in the same catchment to building new wetlands and upgrading waste water treatment plants.

The backlog has now fallen to around 12,000 homes, with numerous significant sites being unlocked through these solutions or the purchase of ‘phosphate credits’ (where land in the same catchment is taken out of active agricultural use, cancelling out the impact of the new homes).

But smaller house-builders are still struggling to move forward with their various development sites, lacking the financial resources to secure the necessary mitigation upfront on top of other rising cost pressures.

Chris Winter, managing director of West of England Developments (Taunton) Ltd (pictured inset) gave an insight into the ongoing challenges in a recent interview with the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

He said: “To begin with, it was catastrophic because we had no solution. Natural England dumped this problem on the local authorities, making them look competent but giving them no authority to make decisions everything had to revert back to Natural England.

“In 20 years of development, I'd never dealt with Natural England and I was then dealing with them every other week trying to find solutions to this problem. It’s been a headache ever since.