Wilder Planning

Together with neighbouring Wildlife Trusts and nature conservation partners we work to ensure that national and local planning policy and regulations protect and help restore the natural environment. We also engage decision makers (for example MPs and Councillors) to educate them on planning issues and, where necessary, to hold them to account.

We prioritise responding to consultations on strategic plans and policies for planning new development in Suffolk.

Regularly reviewed (usually every 5 years) Local Plans identify where new development would be best located in the future and establish local environmental policies that help inform planning decisions.

At a parish level, Neighbourhood Plans can help the local community set their own priorities for their neighbourhood, including for protecting and restoring nature and improving local green spaces. Other important strategic plans include the Suffolk Minerals and Waste Local Plan

Find out how you can engage with your Local and Neighbourhood Plans here.

Thousands of planning applications are submitted in Suffolk every year. To make the most effective use of our limited resources we must prioritise challenging those applications that pose the greatest risk to wildlife. These can include proposals that would harm protected sites or set dangerous precedents for damaging development.

While we are unable to respond to all planning applications or offer tailored advice on responding to specific applications, we do encourage individuals and communities to engage with planning. You can find advice on how you can do this, including responding to planning applications to protect wildlife, here.

We work with planners, developers, and landowner to make new development better for wildlife. This can include locating new development sensitively to avoid doing damage to existing wildlife, improving the ecological design of new development to incorporate features that benefit wildlife, and encouraging developers to create and restore wildlife habitats.

Everyone can have voice in the future of the place where they live and work by engaging with planning. Public consultation on strategic plan-making (e.g. Local and Neighbourhood Plans) gives people an opportunity to help shape local policies and what kind of development goes where in their local area. Responding to individual planning applications can help to ensure these properly consider and protect wildlife. Find out more about how you can engage with planning to help protect and restore wildlife in Suffolk here.

Our engagement with Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG)  includes assessing and commenting on planning applications where BNG has been used, as well as recommending that it is used to give greater understanding on potential biodiversity loss on complex sites. We therefore have a good understanding of the Biodiversity Metric application as well as the legislation and evidence supporting its use.

We are also engaged in promoting good practices when using BNG as part of planning applications as well as advocating that BNG delivers more for nature by pushing local authorities to adopt ambitious strategies that aim to deliver more than the minimum net gain required.

Local Plans

How you can engage

• Steps to engaging with your Local Plan
• How to respond/what to include in your response to protect wildlife and the environment in your area

Neighbourhood Plans

How you can engage

• As a Parish Council: Steps to ensuring that wildlife and the environment are protected and enhanced within your Neighbourhood Plan
• As an individual: How to respond/What to include in your response to protect wildlife and the environment in your area

Responding to planning applications

• The Planning Process
• How you can engage: How to respond/What to include in your response to protect wildlife and the environment in your area:

1. Gathering evidence
2. Writing your response

Click an item below for more details:

All district and borough councils are required to prepare a Local Plan which outlines where and how development should take place through the creation of Local Plan policies and allocation of land for different types of development. Local Plan policies and allocations are created to ensure the delivery of an appropriate numbers of homes and other infrastructure required for the area, whilst ensuring the protection of the environment and the character of the area for local people.

How you can engage

By law, Local Plans must be prepared in consultation with the community and the Local Planning Authority must consider any representation made in response. Local Planning Authorities must explain how they will engage with the local community through the creation of a Statement of Community Involvement, which sets out how and when the Local Planning Authority will involve the community in preparing the Local Plan.

You can register with your Local Planning Authority to receive updates on Local Plan developments and consultations, which is a great way to keep up to date with the Local Plan process in your district or borough.

The plan making process is a long one, with Local Planning Authorities now expected to review Local Plans and Statements of Community Involvement at least once every 5 years, to ensure strategies and policies remain relevant and address the needs of the community. This means that there is an almost continuous process of Local Plan reviews and updates across the Local Planning Authorities in Suffolk.

Whilst Suffolk Wildlife Trust aims to respond to all consultations on Local Plans in Suffolk, public engagement with the Local Plan process is key to ensuring that development fits with the needs of the local community. Public engagement is through a series of consultations carried out through the Local Plan development process, where local people and stakeholders can have their say.

Steps to engaging with your Local Plan:

1. Visit your Local Planning Authority Local Plan webpage to see what stage the Local Plan process is at in your area, see links below:
   West Suffolk Local Plan
   Babergh & Mid Suffolk Joint Local Plan
   East Suffolk Local Plan
   Ipswich Local Plan
2. Register to your Local Planning Authority Website to receive updates on the Local Plan process in your area
3. Respond to Local Plan consultations

How to respond/What to include in your response to protect wildlife and the environment in your area:

1. Read through the Local Plan policies which are focused on wildlife and the environment – could these be strengthened to provide greater protection for wildlife within the Local Plan?
2. Look at the housing allocations in your area – consider how they impact wildlife and the ecological network in your parish or neighbourhood?
3. Think about why wildlife and the environment matter to you and your community, and add this to your response.

Parish and town councils can also produce Neighbourhood Plans which set out specific policies for their area. Whilst these must conform with national planning policy and the adopted Local Plan for your area, they allow local communities to set policies to shape development in their area. They can be used to create a shared vision for your area and ensure that the protection of wildlife and the environment are a key focus in your parish.

Neighbourhood Plans cannot stop development from happening in your area, but they can:

• Choose where new homes and other development is built in your parish
• Influence what new development looks like
• Highlight what wildlife and the environment means to people in your parish
• Map the biodiversity assets of your parish such as greenspace, hedgerows, ponds and the presence of certain species
• Protect and enhance existing green space in your parish for wildlife, such as parks, nature reserves and County Wildlife Sites
• Ensure that space for nature is integral to new development in your parish with wildlife friendly landscaping, Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) and green space
• Identify where green corridors could be created to link existing green space for people and wildlife and add to the Nature Recovery Network
• Target Biodiversity Net Gain from development to key biodiversity assets and species within your parish
• Help improve health and wellbeing in your parish through improved access to nature and greenspace
• Help improve the resilience of your community to climate change

How you can engage

As a Parish or Town Council

Neighbourhood Plans are prepared either by the parish or town council or a Neighbourhood forum, which can be set up of community members when a parish or town council does not exist. Look to your Local Planning Authority for detailed guidance on how to prepare your Neighbourhood Plan. Firstly, the Local Planning Authority will need to formally designate the neighbourhood area and then the plan preparation can start. Neighbourhood Plan preparation will also require consultation with your community to determine what the priorities are in your area.

Steps to ensuring that wildlife and the environment are protected and enhanced within your Neighbourhood Plan:

• Evidence – Get information about the habitats and species in your parish, by requesting the records for your parish from Suffolk Biodiversity Information Service. Ensure you request information on where the County Wildlife Sites are in your parish and why they are designated as regionally important. To find information on Priority habitats, land in conservation management (i.e., Agri-environment schemes) and designated sites in your parish, such as Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs), Special Protection Areas (SPAs) and Special Areas of Conservation (SACs), go to the Natural England mapping tool MAGIC maps.
• Survey your local area – Some areas of the county will have limited records of species and habitats, but local people can add to this knowledge. Encourage local people to get out surveying species and identifying key habitats for wildlife across your parish.
• Map the Biodiversity Assets of your parish – Map all the known habitats (e.g., ponds, woodlands, hedgerows, grasslands, heathlands, wetlands, rivers), land in conservation management, local green space and designated sites including County Wildlife Sites, Roadside Nature Reserves, SSSIs, SACs and SPAs. Look at where the core areas for wildlife are in your parish, for example where there is a grouping of important habitats or a corridor where wildlife habitats are linked such as along a river corridor.
• Map the Green Corridors in your parish – Your Biodiversity Assets map will show you where the habitats are that need protecting in your parish. You can also consider where existing biodiversity assets could be enhanced by improving management for wildlife, buffered by creating new habitats between designated habitats and new development or agriculture, or linked by adding hedgerows, scrub or unmown grass margins between existing habitats. This will all form the basis of a Green Corridors map of your parish. Make sure to consider how habitats in neighbouring parishes link into habitats in your parish. If you don't know where to start take a look at the National Habitat Network Maps in MAGIC maps to see where habitat creation would be best targeted in your parish.
• Add these maps to your Neighbourhood Plan – point developers to them, so that any habitat creation or enhancement required for Biodiversity Net Gain in your parish is targeted to where you want it and where it will provide the greatest benefits for wildlife. Encourage development in your parish to improve Green Corridors for people and wildlife.
• Highlight the key species in your parish so that developers can focus enhancement for wildlife on these species– for example, if you have great populations of swifts and hazel dormouse in your parish you will want developments to include swift boxes and native hedgerow and scrub planting which improves links for hazel dormouse across the parish.
• Require wildlife friendly lighting for all development.
• Include an ambition for 20% Biodiversity Net Gain in your parish.
• Highlight the health and wellbeing benefits of improved access to nature for local people.

Suffolk Wildlife Trust aims to respond to all Neighbourhood Plan consultations in Suffolk, to ensure they have wildlife and the environment at their heart to help protect the county’s wildlife and wild places, as well as ensuring that access to nature is universal.

The Suffolk Wildlife Trust consultancy, Wilder Ecology, can also provide advice to parish and town councils through the production of Landscape and Biodiversity Assessments. This is a paid service where we pull together all the landscape and biodiversity evidence for your town or parish, such as what protected species, priority habitats, County Wildlife Sites and Sites of Special Scientific Interest you have in the parish, which can then be used to inform the creation of your Neighbourhood Plan.

As an individual

Parish and Town councils across Suffolk will be at varying points in the Neighbourhood Plan process, so the first thing to do is check what stage this process is at in your parish. Most parishes now have a website where you can find this information, or you can attend your next parish council meeting and ask the question.

Suffolk District Councils also have webpages where you can find information and check the status of Neighbourbood Plans in the district:

Neighbourhood Plans in the area » East Suffolk Council
Neighbourhood plans (westsuffolk.gov.uk)
Neighbourhood Planning » Babergh Mid Suffolk

Your parish may already have a ‘made’ Neighbourhood Plan, meaning it has been created and approved by the Local Planning Authority, or they may be consulting on their draft neighbourhood plan. However, many parishes still have not started the neighbourhood plan process, which may be for several reasons including resource.

Neighbourhood Plan preparation requires consultation with the community to determine what the priorities are in your area. If your parish has started neighbourhood plan preparation the neighbourhood planning group will be required to talk to local people throughout the development of the draft Neighbourhood plan, as well as having a formal consultation on the draft plan where you can submit comments to your parish or town council.

How to respond/What to include in your response to protect wildlife and the environment in your area:

1. Read through the Neighbourhood Plan policies which are focused on wildlife and the environment – could these be strengthened to provide greater protection for wildlife within the Neighbourhood Plan?
2. Check which habitats, green space and wildlife species have been mentioned in the plan text and policies – has anything been missed? Do you know of any important wildlife areas in your parish which have not been included?
3. Think about why wildlife and the environment matter to you and your community, and add this to your response

Useful links

Home - Locality Neighbourhood Planning
Neighbourhood Planning Guidance Suffolk County Council
Neighbourhood Plans in the area East Suffolk Council
Neighbourhood Plans West Suffolk
Neighbourhood Planning Babergh Mid Suffolk

The Planning Process

Planning applications are submitted to the Local Planning Authority and then the Local Planning Authority publicised the application.

Planning applications are then consulted on. The consultation varies depending on the scale and type of development and it will be over a set period. Consultation gives local people, parish councils, statutory consultees like Natural England and other organisations such as Suffolk Wildlife Trust the opportunity to assess the application and the documents submitted and submit comments in support or objecting to the application. Consultees and parish councils will receive notifications of relevant planning applications and local people can find out about planning applications through advertisements in newspapers, notices at the application site or by being notified of local planning applications by your parish or town council.

Once responses have been compiled and some of the issues raised addressed by the applicant, planning applications which receive significant public interest or have a significant environmental impact go to planning committee. Planning committees are made up of local councillors and the planning officer will present the application to members and recommend a decision. There is an opportunity for local people to have their say at the planning committee, by registering to speak.

How you can engage

Writing a response to a planning application is the main way that local people can engage with the planning system. You can also speak to your parish or town council to let them know your views on the application, speak to your local councillor or MP about the application and/or speak to Suffolk Wildlife Trust to see if we are engaging with the application you are concerned about. If you remain concerned about the impacts of an application on wildlife and the environment, write a letter outlining your concerns. Generally, objections to a development can be made on wildlife ground if a development directly or indirectly impacts designated sites (SSSIs, CWSs etc.), Priority habitats, protected or Priority species or ecological networks such as rivers and hedgerows.

How to respond/What to include in your response to protect wildlife and the environment in your area:

1. Gathering evidence:

• Check your local records office Suffolk Biodiversity Information Service to see what species have been recorded and if you have any County Wildlife Sites locally that could be impacted by the development.
• Check which species in your parish are protected species: 

Bats - all UK species
Great Crested Newts
Breeding birds
Hazel dormice
Water vole
Otter
Badgers
Reptiles
White clawed crayfish

• Check the Natural England mapping tool MAGIC maps to see if any designated sites, such as Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs), Special Protection Areas (SPAs) and Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) will be impacted by the development.
• Look through the documents submitted with the application, such as landscape plans, ecological surveys and report.
• Head to your Local Planning Authority Local Plan webpage and look at the relevant planning policies and housing allocation in your areas
• Check the National Planning Policy Framework
• Speak to the planning officer, your parish council, local councillor and/or other local people, to see if others share your concerns and would support your comments or objection

2. Writing your response:

• Address the planning officer for the case and clearly state the planning application number in your response
• State clearly whether you object to or support the application.
• Keep your response factual and polite, avoid using emotive language.
• Respond before the consultation deadline – you can contact the council if you do not know the deadline.
• If you think there are grounds to object to the application due to potential impacts to wildlife or the environment, refer to the evidence you have gathered
• Clearly state if you think the development does not comply with local planning policy and relate your comments to local plan policy if you can
• State whether or not the development is in a location which has been allocated in the local plan
• Suggests way of reducing the impact of the development on wildlife and the environment
• Send your response to the local planning authority by post or by email, see links to contact details below:

East Suffolk Council
Babergh & Mid Suffolk Council
West Suffolk Council – Address: Planning Department, West Suffolk Council, West Suffolk House, Western Way, Bury St Edmunds, IP33 3YU.
Email: planning.help@westsuffolk.gov.uk
Ipswich Borough Council 

• Send a copy of your response to your local councillor as well: https://www.gov.uk/find-your-local-councillors

They are large scale development schemes relating to energy, transport, water, or waste which require a type of consent known as “development consent”. They include energy generation (nuclear power stations, windfarms, solar farms), major electricity lines, major roads and railway lines, waste and water (reservoirs, waste water treatment plants) and major pipelines.

As the name suggests, NSIPs are major projects of national significance, so the decisions on applications are made by national government, unlike ordinary planning applications which are decided by local councils. Applications for such major developments are handled by the Planning Inspectorate (PINS). You can read more about the process for NSIP applications and how you can engage with them on the PINS website here.

Normally developers will consult the Trust about any NSIPs they are proposing which might affect the natural environment at the “pre-application” stage. Developers employ environmental consultants to assess the effects of their development on the environment. We will discuss with the developer and their consultant the scope which their environmental assessments need to cover, and we will work with them to ensure their assessments are comprehensive and accurate. The scale of the likely impact on the natural environment will determine how much time we devote to each case. The greater the likely impact the proposal will have on statutory sites, County Wildlife Sites, our nature reserves or key protected species, the greater our involvement is likely to be. We will also look for opportunities to enhance and recover nature, in line with our ’30 by 30’ ambition for 30% of Suffolk’s land and sea to be well-managed for nature by 2030. We will seek to achieve 20% ‘net gain’ for wildlife from all developments. We will work collaboratively with other conservation organisations such as Natural England and RSPB to do this.

We are in the middle of twin crises for climate and biodiversity, both globally and here in the UK, and the two are inextricably linked. Climate change is driving nature’s decline, and the loss of wildlife and wild places leaves us ill-equipped to reduce carbon emissions and adapt to change. One cannot be solved without the other.

We know from experience that restoring nature can help soak up carbon emissions - known as natural solutions to climate change - whilst contributing many additional benefits. When healthy, our natural habitats can reduce the risk of flooding, help prevent coastal erosion, improve people’s health and wellbeing, as well as maintain healthy soils, clean water and the pollinators needed for our crops – and therefore sustain us.

Nature itself is at risk from climate change, but if helped to recover, its potential to store carbon does mean it can help us to turn the tide on the climate catastrophe.

NSIPs, particularly for energy generation, are a vital part of the solution to the climate and nature crisis, as they can help us reduce our reliance on fossil fuels for energy. Suffolk, in common with the rest of East Anglia, has many energy generation and related NSIPs, because of the amount of offshore wind energy projects off our coast and a number of solar farms on land which take advantage of our relatively sunny climate.

We think that one of the most important ways of reducing harm to nature from new developments is a strategic approach, where the need, scale and location of multiple projects is planned in advance to enable them to go ahead in the right locations, using shared infrastructure and maximising their sustainable use of resources.

We are already engaging with many energy generation and related transmission projects such as Sizewell C (nuclear) Sunnica (solar), East Anglia Offshore (offshore wind), Bramford to Twinstead, East Anglia Green and Sea Link (electricity transmission on land and at sea). Although we welcome projects in principle which contribute to mitigating the climate crisis by reducing fossil fuel use, we are always looking to ensure that they avoid impacts on nature through their scale and location. For more information on Sizewell see News: Sizewell C | Suffolk Wildlife Trust

Decisions taken by national government will not always put nature first, as it might be considered that there is over-riding public interest which leads to damaging projects going ahead. In such circumstances we will seek to ensure that any impacts on nature are taken into account and that realistic, deliverable compensation is put in place, for instance by restoring or recreating habitats elsewhere. In addition we will seek 20% net gain from any project so that there is more nature being put into recovery than is being lost.

You can comment on the proposal to the developer during the ‘pre-application’ stage and register as an ‘interested party’ with the developer to ensure you can participate in the process of examination by PINS. At times we might ask members to support the position the Trust is taking on certain projects where we think that there will be disproportionate damage to nature; in those circumstances we will outline our case and encourage members to write in support of it.

National Infrastructure Planning 

The process | National Infrastructure Planning

Planning and development | The Wildlife Trusts