Government plans announced this week will see the removal of crucial protections – placing further pressures on our already severely damaged rivers and globally rare Wiltshire chalk streams.

This week, the Government announced that it would be scrapping the Nutrient Neutrality scheme, which ensures that suitable measures are put in place by developers to counteract an increase in pollution of our rivers as a result of new housing development, including in protected areas of Wiltshire.

Every new house built results in more sewage being produced, whilst sewage works are already failing, with repeated discharges of raw sewage. Even when treated, the effluent from sewage works is adding harmful nutrients, which causes an increased growth of algae. This results in decreased levels of dissolved oxygen, which can choke our rivers, killing fish and other aquatic life. Chalk streams, with their diverse ecosystems, are particularly vulnerable to nutrient pollution.

The Government announcement follows complaints from housebuilders that pollution-limiting requirements were ‘costly and time-consuming’, despite the success of schemes which saw farm pollution reduced, or wetlands created to buffer and filter pollution to offset that from new development. The Wildlife Trusts have already demonstrated a range of nature-based solutions that can take the nutrients out of the system. Landholders and environmental organisations such as Wiltshire Wildlife Trust are in a position to rapidly invest in large, landscape-scale nature recovery schemes with funding from developers to protect and improve water quality.

Under these proposed changes to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, instead of making developers pay to offset their pollution, the Government will increase funding to the nutrient mitigation scheme run by Natural England - meaning that taxpayers rather than builders will pay to prevent pollution.

Jo Lewis, CEO of Wiltshire Wildlife Trust, says: