Legal & Regulatory News

UK Government tables amendments to Environment Bill to strengthen biodiversity targets and to tackle water pollution

On 26 August, the UK Government tabled various amendments to be made to the Environment Bill, which aim to strengthen the provisions in place to halt biodiversity loss as well as to further tackle water pollution.

The proposed amendments are intended to:

• strengthen the legal language of the UK Government's target to ‘halt the decline in species abundance by 2030’;
• require water companies to monitor and make publicly available the quality impact of their sewage discharges as well as to provide near real-time information on their storm overflows;
• place a duty on the UK Government to publish a report exploring the use of overflows and the potential benefits and drawbacks of eliminating them completely, as well as a separate investigation into the use of 'Sustainable Drainage Systems'; and
• adopt further security for the independence of the Office for Environmental Protection in the form of parliamentary scrutiny.

The new amendments reflect the Prime Minister's pledges to halt and reverse the loss of biodiversity by 2030, as well as his involvement in the '30x30' initiative which aims to protect 30% of the world's land and 30% of the world's oceans by 2030.

Click here for more information on the amendments.