Tag Archives: Nutrient Neutrality

Regulation 77 Habitat Regulations Application

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Regulation 77 Habitat Regulations Application

We can help you undertake a Regulation 77 Habitat Regulations Application, where ever you are in the UK. Th process is much the same across England, and Wales.

Contact Us < To get a quote for doing this.

In short there is a formal request to be written, and a report is submitted called a Shadow Habitats Regulation Assessment (SHRA) which speeds you on your way to planning approval.

You may also need to put a deposit on some nutrient credits. These might be Nitrogen or Phosphorous Credits depending where you are in the country.

Why Have You Been Asked

Making a Regulation 77 application is a critical step if you are using “Permitted Development” rights (like converting an office to a house) but your site is near a protected habitat. Under the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017, you cannot legally start work until this approval is granted.

There is usually no standard national form for this; instead, it is a formal request sent to your Local Planning Authority (LPA).

Wetlands are Sometimes Used for Creating Credits 

The wording from you local council may be as follows:

Habitat Regulations Reg 77

“The Applicant is reminded that the site is situated within the catchment of the River Avon Special Area for Conservation and New Forest Protected Sites and has potential to have an adverse effect upon the integrity of these European sites. This means that the development hereby assessed as being permitted development cannot be lawfully commenced until the local planning authority, along with the appropriate nature conservation body, has made an Appropriate Assessment of the implications for the European site(s) under the Conservation of Habitats and Species (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 (Habitat Regulations) and has confirmed that the proposals will not adversely affect the integrity of the site(s). It is therefore advised that the Applicant should consult with Natural England about the scheme and following their agreement, submit an application under Regulation 77 of the Habitat Regulations to the local planning authority for consideration and approval.”

What to Include in Your Application

To make a valid application, you generally need to provide the following to your council’s planning department:

  • Details of the Development: A clear description of the work you intend to carry out.
  • Site & Location Plans: Scaled drawings showing the site boundary and the proposed layout/elevations.
  • Regulation 76 Notification (Optional but Recommended): If you have already consulted Natural England (or Natural Resources Wales) and they gave you an opinion that the project won’t harm the site, include that letter.
  • Shadow HRA / Ecological Report: Many councils now require a “Shadow Habitats Regulations Assessment” prepared by an ecologist to help them make their decision.
  • The Application Fee: The fee is nationally set at £30.
  • Reference Numbers: If you have already received “Prior Approval” for the development, include that reference number.

Wookey Sewage “Works” – A Disgrace

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Wookey (Somerset) Sewage “Works” – A Disgrace

If something works only half of the time. . . does it work?

If you got in your car, and it only started 60% of the time, its probably due for repairs, and maybe replacement. . . . and if you paid £100 Million for that car, how about that? And then what about if after buying the car the garage had stuffed it full of smelly rubbish. . . are you getting cross yet? Well this is happening to you right now.

“Discovery “

As part of routine investigations for Nutrient Neutrality work we have conducted some research on Wookey Water Recycling Centre.

Wookey Water Recycling Centre (WRC) is only treating 60% of the sewage that is piped to it. It discharges in to the River Axe.

The River Axe – A Beautiful River

Facts and Figures

The Wookey WRC is so neglected, that for 60% of the time over the last 2 years of monitoring, the sewage has been discharged directly in to the river without being treated.

The data sown in the below table is stark.  3,500 approx hours of raw sewage, filled with wet wipes, sanitary towels and condoms etc being but directly in to the River Axe.

While exact spill volumes (in cubic meters) are not readily available in public summaries (water companies typically report duration and frequency), I can provide recent, specific data on the duration and frequency of sewage spills from the Wookey Water Recycling Centre (WRC) near Wells, Somerset, which discharges into the River Axe.1 This WRC is a key local site operated by Wessex Water.2

The data below represents spills from the Wookey WRC, which is the sewage treatment works (STW) for the area, and associated Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) in the River Axe catchment, based on recent Environment Agency and water company data (primarily from 2024 and 2023 reporting periods).

Sewage Spill Data near Wookey, Wells (Wessex Water)

Site Name Asset Type Reporting Year (e.g., 2024) Number of Sewage Dumps Total Duration (Hours) Percentage of Total Hours in a Year (%)
Wookey Water Recycling Centre STW/WRC 2024 197 3,541 40.4%
WOOKEY WATER RECYCLING CENTRE STW/WRC 2023 148 3,696 42.2%
GLEN COTTAGE CSO CSO 2024 56 172 2.0%
AXE ROAD COMBINED SEWER OVERFLOW CSO 2024 11 22 0.25%

Key Takeaways for Wookey WRC (2023/2024 Data)

  1. High Duration: The Wookey Water Recycling Centre (WRC) is a major contributor to pollution in the River Axe.3 For the 2023 reporting period, it had an extremely high total overflow duration of 3,696 hours (equivalent to 154 days of non-stop spilling).
  2. Percentage of Total Hours: For 2023, the Wookey WRC overflowed for 42.2% of the year (3,696 hours / 8,760 total hours in a year). For 2024, the duration was slightly lower at 3,541 hours, or 40.4% of the year. This demonstrates a massive and persistent issue.

Frequency: In 2024, the Wookey WRC spilled 197 times

Who Is To Blame?

Things change. Populations grow. Rain water volumes increase. So yes sewage companies have more work to do. But they aren’t doing what is required. And what’s more they are making huge sums of money whilst permanently ruining our rivers.

Imagine This Was Your Family And The River Was Your Home

Wessex Water’s profits are typically reported for the financial year ending around June 30th. Based on the most recent published financial statements:

  1. Financial Year Ending June 30, 2024 (FY 2023/2024):
    • Wessex Water reported a Profit before tax of £17 million
    • (This was a significant turnaround from the previous year.)
  2. Financial Year Ending June 30, 2023 (FY 2022/2023):
    • The company reported a Loss before tax of £43.2 million.

That’s Bad. . . But

As well as profits from Wessex Water another $65 Million dollars was “shifted” to YTL, Wessex Water’s Owners in Maylaisia. This is problematic.

The profits generated by a UK monopoly (Wessex Water) are being taken out of the country, reducing the potential UK tax base on the subsequent distribution and leading to concerns that a public service is being used to enrich foreign shareholders while the UK faces infrastructure and service issues.

The Mechanism: Debt Loading

Wessex Water is 100% owned by YTL Power International Berhad (a subsidiary of the Malaysian YTL Corporation). The standard practice for UK water companies owned by foreign private equity or conglomerates is to load the UK operating company with large amounts of debt.

  • Wessex Water takes on debt (either from external markets or, crucially, via intra-group loans from YTL subsidiaries).
  • The interest payments on this debt are treated as a tax-deductible expense in the UK, which significantly reduces the UK company’s taxable profit.
  • This interest income then flows to the foreign parent (YTL) or its offshore affiliates, where it may be taxed at a lower rate or potentially zero, depending on the routing mechanism (such as using “quoted Eurobonds”).

This transfer of wealth in the form of tax-deductible interest is the core volume of the potential profit shifting.

Financial Estimation

Publicly available accounts for Wessex Water Services Finance Plc (which holds much of the group debt) provide the clearest indication of the scale:

  • Total Interest Expense: For the financial year ending June 30, 2021, Wessex Water reported Financial Expenses (primarily interest payments) of approximately £78.7 million.
  • Cash Flow Interest Paid: The actual cash flow for “Interest Paid” in the same period was £62.1 million.

This range of £62 million to £78 million represents the annual interest payment burden that reduces the company’s UK taxable profit and transfers value to its owners/affiliates.

Is The Axe Your Local River?

Lots of people are making money whilst dumping plastics, and other damaging materials in your local river. Not to mention all of the $h1t.

Nutrient Credit & BNG Credits – Lessons Learned

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Nutrient Credit & BNG Credits – Lessons Learned

This is a dictated blog post so please excuse the poor punctuation although I expect the speech to text algorithm I’m using probably does a better job at a spelling than I do so at least that’s something! I also tried to write this as informally as possible and also put some very slight humour in it. . . .  this isn’t a reflection of my lack of sincerity with regards this topic but apparently if I am to keep ahead of AI then I need to inject humor and humans sensibility into my written content . . .  so there we go Brave New World. . . .

We’ve finally come to a point with nutrient neutrality where we have a complete system for measuring the inputs & outputs (which has been the case for a few years), and we also now (as of just a few weeks ago) have a complete legal system (in some areas at least) for the delivery of nutrient credits from off-site sources.

This took around two years to arrange and I’m a bit apprehensive about the same thing happening with biodiversity net gain will planning authorities and natural England learn from the lessons of the past four years and the laborious drag that has been nutrient neutrality all will they reinvent the wheel and keep his waiting another four years for biodiversity credits.

Baselines and Loads

In nutrient neutrality we talk about baselines and loads as in the before and after nutrient balance of a particular site and this is the same to some extent for biodiversity because we have a baseline and we also have post-development figure which has to be higher than the pre-development figure.

This is all very well set out in natural England’s biodiversity net gain matrices and we have accrued considerable in-house experience in filling these tables out as well as conducting various baseline surveys that are involved such as hepatak condition surveys so this sound so this part of biodiversity net gain sounds quite promising and certainly progressing as well or perhaps better than nutrient neutrality calculations of the same type.

It’s worth noting as well that since they’re release the BNG calculator have not been updated time and time again like many of the phosphorus calculators around the country Somerset Council and Cornwall Council have both been very bad and doing this with several updates since the initial calculator released.

Mitigation Projects

So this all sounds pretty good so far we’ve got to where working things out for BNG, and with nutrient neutrality we have some legal precedence which might apply to biodiversity net gain.

But this is where the good luck starts to be slightly eroded by some rather poorly planned schemes around land use.

So biodiversity net gain can be a profitable land use although it does lock the land up for around 80 years each credit is worth around 25,000 push and one hectare planted to mix broadly woodland can create five appetite habitat credits which is about 125,000 pounds so that sounds quite good.

The problem is that biodiversity netgame credits are not the only thing that farmers can do with underproductive land in fact there’s a very recent scheme under the sustainable farming initiative which sees underprotective areas of land set aside for around five years being very attractive option at present and in the number of cases where we visited farms and advised farmers on what they can expect to gain from implementation of net gain projects on the land we have found that they cite sustainable farming initiative as a reason not for doing it because it will pay better in the short term, and they don’t have to lock up their land for a huge period which may affect their children or possibly even grandchildren.

So there is a clash there between two conflicting schemes that surely won’t help it least in the short term.

Legal Smeagols

So lastly but definitely not leastly (you see AI would not do quirky spelling like that) we have the legal stuff, and I have to admit that we haven’t really dealt with very much of this with regards to biodiversity net gain or the creation of biodiversity credit schemes but one could suppose that it will encounter the same barriers as the legal elements of off-site credit schemes that have been faced by nutrient credit schemes.

In these cases we have seen a variety of legal implements being used one example of which might be an overarching section 106 agreement which can be used by a credit scheme provider to prove to the Council that they will take responsibility for the scheme in the long run the people accepting the credit also have to fill out various pieces of paperwork which may involve contracts or supply which are between the credit user and the credit seller or perhaps the unilateral undertaking that can also be used in some instances some after worse examples that we have heard of come from caulmore Cornwall where local councils have flared to the idea of putting notes on landowners title deeds which has gone down very badly.

You should definitely contact us if you want to run a credit scheme for biodiversity net gain. It will be complicated and for your own sanity, you should pay us to do it for you.