Land & Rural

The UK Government is introducing Environmental Land Management schemes to replace payments made under the Common Agricultural Policy in England (devolved administrations have separate schemes).  

The schemes shift subsidy from primarily rewarding the amount of land farmed to specific environmental benefits and are to be launched by 2024. RICS believes governments and devolved administrations should:

• support agricultural businesses to evaluate and compare land management practices to help reduce emissions, support biodiversity, and retain a safe, high-quality food supply.  RICS supports the evaluation and benchmarking of such data as a key tool for government to assess performance against objectives
  
• incentivise agricultural businesses to support environmental improvements (eg, lower GHG, increased nutrients in soil, reduced run-off, greater biodiversity) and this will include capital equipment.  There is low profitability in the sector which deters investment and match funding may not be sufficiently attractive in some cases.
  
• encourage carbon-offsetting projects or renewable energy generation as alternative land uses to supplement food production to diversify agricultural income base.
  
• devolved administrations (Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland) each have differing policy frameworks in effect and will require specific support which is appropriate for the challenges and opportunities faced in those regions.

Society is realising with growing clarity that holistic measurement of natural capital has the potential to preserve nature for future generations and as a matter of urgency the costs and benefits must be reflected in financial appraisals and valuations of nature. RICS calls for government policy measures that demand the increased use of data to support more accurate and complete land valuations and capture a greater number of externalities. The valuation of nature is changing, and new approaches will increasingly become apparent in traditional spheres of work for chartered surveyors. Land use and development decisions will more often draw on valuers, land managers, and estate managers, and evidence will increasingly be sought to inform transaction decisions.

Compulsory purchase plays a vital role in the development of infrastructure, the regeneration of our communities and ensures the provision of new homes and other essential community services. A single compensation code for compulsory purchase is desirable, as it would regularise issues relating to discretionary blight, basic and occupier loss payments, advance payments, and legislation which currently is a jumble of different statutes. Failing this, a comprehensive and endorsed code of practice would help. RICS urges government to develop guidance on discretionary blight and to set an appropriate level of interest for overdue compensation payments to encourage prompt payment by acquiring authorities and support an even-handed approach set out in the compensation code.

RICS supports proportionate changes to facilitate telecommunications infrastructure provision, for example;

• use of permitted development right to allow masts to be installed within 20m of the highway on buildings that are less than 15m in height.
  
• we recognise Article 2(3) land (National Parks, AONBs, Conservation Areas) and sites of special scientific interest as requiring a specific and more restrictive regime but sees no need for other land (Highways, inter alia) to be subject to additional constraints on mast deployment.  
  
• optimal 5G coverage will require new antennas operating on different frequencies from existing networks.  Where minimal deployment is required, it may be an acceptable compromise to coming operating frequencies into fewer antennas.  Where this is not the case, multiple antennas can be arranged on a single structure and mast-sharing becomes an effective use of resource.
  
• there can be a lack of understanding of the enabling role of telecoms development in planning authorities, with the result that other items are perceived as having higher priority.  Requiring local authorities to have a team responsible for promoting and facilitating this form of development would be of benefit to the industry.

To ensure the future viability of the rural economy, more must be done to ensure that land is seen as a valuable asset. The rural economy also has to diversify and look to other land-based industries including recreation, tourism and energy, including forestry, and carbon sinks. A large barrier to economic growth is access to broadband. Our world and ways of working are becoming increasingly digital and RICS welcomes the Government’s commitment to improve connectivity in rural communities as a way to level-up opportunity but calls for:

• proper devolution policies in place to support rural areas at risk of being overshadowed by city or large town priorities or struggling to raise revenue. The growth of city-regions for investment purposes risks leaving rural areas behind.
  
• reforms to move from fossil fuel dependent plant and machinery towards more sustainable alternatives and the role that taxation can play in incentivising this transformation.

RICS is concerned about nutrient levels, particularly high phosphate and nitrate levels, and the detrimental impact this is having on planning permissions for new housing and within the agricultural sector. We understand that there are currently around 35 planning and local authorities in England where this is a growing concern, and 9 in Wales.

In England alone, it is estimated that this has resulted in more than 35,000 new home applications either stalling, having or resulting in the developer pay additional offsetting costs. Modern agricultural practices are by far the largest source of rising levels of nitrates and phosphates, but wastewater from homes and development contribute significantly too.

An excess of nutrients impacts on marine life and the normal functioning of the ecosystem with nitrates generally impacting saltwater environments and phosphates effecting freshwater environments – both require different mitigations to remediate, including changes to land-use which could have consequences for food production and the loss of agricultural jobs.

RICS supports the use of effective mitigations to achieve nutrient neutrality (eg well-designed wetlands can function as nitrate sinks and facilitate development) and third-party mitigation schemes can support development where sites do not have access to on-site measures and would welcome more stringent thresholds for nitrate removal at source by water utility companies as a means of reducing the need for further mitigations.

RICS recognises that water is a scarce and precious resource and that its usage is rapidly becoming a major issue across the built environment.  Like all natural resources, water must be used sustainably for future generations and use should be measured across the built environment to support conservation and ESG reporting.  

RICS appreciates that buildings are large consumers of water and encourages owners/occupiers to monitor usage as they would gas or electricity, both in the commercial and residential spheres.  RICS supports the use of distributed SuDS in urban environments to minimise flood risk and greater investment in sewage infrastructure – too many of which are antiquated in the UK.