The Government has announced confirmation of a second new national forest for the Ox-Cam corridor, and a competition will launch in early 2026 to determine the location of a third national forest in the Midlands or North of England.

Chiefs of 32 nature organisations have issued a warning to Government that the new planning reforms in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. fail to deliver the Government’s promise of a ‘win-win’ for nature and development, and threaten to demolish environmental law.

The Government has published a planning reform policy working paper paper on development and nature recovery proposing a new approach which uses funding from development to deliver environmental improvements and moves more responsibility for the improvements onto the state rather than developers.

The Wildlife and Countryside Link is calling on Government to double down on delivery in response to the first major review by the Office for Environmental Protection of of the Government’s Environment Improvement Plan.

Government remains largely off track to meets its environmental ambitions and must speed up and scale up its efforts in order to achieve them, the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) has found in its annual progress report published today.

An area bigger than the size of Hertfordshire is to be dedicated to fast tracking nature recovery as six new landscape-scale nature recovery projects are launched by Natural England and the government.

Southern Water is joint funding a dedicated manager role with the RSPB, which will focus on developing an ambitious landscape scale nature recovery strategy to strengthen restoration work in and around the internationally important habitats of Chichester, Langstone and Pagham harbours.

The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs and Natural England have published proposals to boost nature recovery and create and improve protected landscapes across England.