Labour MP Chris Hinchliff — straight out of the NIMBY madrassa that is the Campaign to Protect Rural England — has declared a holy war on housing. His latest crusade? An amendment to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill that would hand unelected bureaucrats the divine right to veto homes in the name of “protecting nature”. It is not policy — it is eco-fundamentalism wrapped in pretentious green vibes. And if Hinchliff gets his way, the only things that will be built in Britain is bat tunnels, disco fishbowls, and compostable shrines to great crested newts.
In this episode of “Let’s Halt Progress to Save the Snails”, the wildlife wonks at Wildlife and Countryside Link (WCL) have released a suite of planning amendments so drenched in eco-virtue signalling and bureaucratic blobbery it could double as performance art. Framed as “protection”, they are in fact a set of elegant weapons of mass destruction hailing from the regressive Theresa Villiers’ vintage of policymaking.
The result? Intergenerational unfairness and geographic age segregation that would see the perversity of extinct Italian villages brought to Basildon. In short, amendments designed by the hedgehog Hezbollah that are so bad they would make Mr Blobby blush, effectively stopping anything from being built — ever again.
We’re in a country where housing is the most visible form of intergenerational unfairness
Crystal balls and conservation cosplay
First up: the demand that developers prove conservational outcomes before any development happens. That’s right — before so much as laying a single brick, a builder must demonstrate any newts potentially, but not proven to be, two miles away thrive. Welcome to time-travelling planning, where developers must borrow Doctor Who’s TARDIS to satisfy bureaucratic prophecies.
WCL wants Environmental Delivery Plans (EDPs) to include “schedules ensuring overall conservation improvement before damage occurs”. Sounds noble. In reality, it is a fantasy standard no project can meet — an elegant way of outlawing development while never saying the words. It comes in addition to calls to further increase the 10 per cent biodiversity net gain requirement. Ostensibly a biodiversity caliphate levy placed on the real victims of the housing crisis, thousands of families trapped in temporary accommodation. All on the order of eco-zealots who worship weeds over people.
Monitoring mania: Bureaucracy by biodiversity
Next, developers must establish a lifelong bureaucracy to monitor, report, and enforce biodiversity gains. Translation: you are not building houses — you are founding a small Department for Leaf and Beetle Affairs. This eternal environmental bookkeeping is not about outcomes. It is about creating enough paperwork to drown developers in sap.
The Veto Leavers: Ban first, ask questions never
But the crown jewel in this shrine to stagnation is the veto power. Under Hedgerow Ayatollah Hinchliff’s amendments, NIMBYs can refuse plans unless developers prove there is no alternative, and all reasonable steps have been taken to avoid harm. Sounds subjective? That is the point. It hands veto authority to “any persons who have lodged a formal objection” a right to appeal against approved applications — empowering eco-fundamentalists to kill approved housing schemes with a stroke of a pen.
Even worse, local authorities must refuse permission for any land marked in Local Nature Recovery Strategies — essentially anti-development land zoning by spreadsheet. Never mind housing need. If a field once hosted a rare butterfly in 2004, forget about ever building there.
This is not planning. It is druidic biodiversity inquisition veto power wrapped in DEFRA jargon.
Hinchliff: Patron saint of stagnation
But in came Chris Hinchliff, who entered the chat following a break from his countryside LARPing to tweet out his proposals with this absurd claim:
Plans to reform environmental regulations risk irreversible harm to nature. My amendments to the Planning Bill would prevent this.
He penned an op-ed that spread supply-sceptic anti-housing misinformation, claiming:
The misdiagnosis on supply leads to the flawed conclusion that the solution to the housing crisis is cutting so-called red tape.
Straight out the NIMBY playbook. And even after receiving backlash to his anti-growth agenda, he doubled down with an evil developer trope, while surreptitiously declaring war on YIMBYs:
When I wrote about developers and their political mouthpieces, I wasn’t asking anyone to identify themselves. Time for a left alternative on planning: tough on developers, big on building council housing.
This from a man elected on a platform of progress. Hinchliff has instead become a one-man loony left dam, blocking the tide of badly needed homes, while parroting CPRE’s anti-building scriptures in Parliament. It is housing hypocrisy with a pastoral filter: pretend to care about intergenerational fairness and housing affordability, while ensuring nothing ever gets built.
His credentials? He used to work for the CPRE, the countryside lobby that treats every planning application like an existential threat to the nation’s hedgerows. Now in office, he is bringing their anti-growth gospel straight into legislation. It is not that Hinchliff forgot what he campaigned on — it is that he never believed it to begin with. A contemptible expression of putting former employer before party.
Build back never
The broader effect of these proposals? To fossilise planning in a vat of environmental green goop, while handing the keys to housing supply over to conversation groups whose battle cry is nothing more than a fabricated “anti-nature” narrative. All taken with aim at the Prime Minister and Chancellor. Meanwhile, the announcements regarding the Nature Restoration Fund, which will do more for environmental recovery, are completely lost on the eco-theocrats. What about giving Natural England flexible powers to consider a wide range of conservation measures while firming up protections on Ramsar Sites? Not holy enough for the Hedgehog Hezbollah. Many of whom are more focused on a de-growth jihad whose infidels are all those priced out from the housing market or languishing in temporary accommodation.
It is this ill-informed blobbery that gets you to a country where housing remains the most visible form of intergenerational unfairness. Their crusade to create the Republic of Badgerstan involves converting the planning system into one steeped in green dogma and NIMBY theology. The word growth? A dirty word. And one where building homes is seen as a dangerous ideological act of blasphemy. Rather than one of moral importance. WCL and its unholy alliance want to turn Britain into an Anti-Concrete Caliphate. Preaching the gospel of sustainability with bogus “win-win” claims for nature and growth if their amendments are accepted. All the while talking out both sides of their mouths with deluded Earth chants transcribed into planning amendments, which will effectively sabotage every home that could make green living possible.
The real endangered species: Housing
What Britain needs is homes. What these amendments offer is a bureaucratic crucifixion of supply, kin to death by blobbery, preyed on by a eco-consultant-industrial complex and a toad with an army of sandal-wearing lobbyists. All of whom, are ready and primed to voraciously feed off state red tape. Yes, environmental protection matters — but not when it is hijacked to make human habitation a negotiable afterthought. We cannot allow graduates of the CPRE madrassa to wage their conservationist crusade on housing. Nor be allowed to dictate where and whether people are allowed to live.
Chris Hinchliff and his ilk are not saving the countryside. They are hoarding it. Their amendments do not protect nature — they entrench an entirely avoidable artificial scarcity in our planning system. One that creates more problems for society than it solves. And if we let the Hedgehog Mujahideen win, the next generation will be sacrificed at the altar of de-growth, or simply left to rot as an underclass in overpriced rentals.
Britain does not need more anti-housing fundamentalist-led planning fatwas. These amendments do not protect the planet — they simply sanctify scarcity.
