The forthcoming white paper on the natural environment should cover local environmental quality including issues like land contamination, soil carbon and urban sprawl, Environmental Protection UK has told the Government.
In its response to DEFRA's July discussion paper, An Invitation to Shape the Nature of England, EPUK says that, given its focus on the role of civil society, the Government should realise businesses and individuals will only take action if they understand there are issues to resolve, that they have the power to act and that action will benefit them.
EPUK says local environmental quality should be an over-arching theme and warns that cost-benefit analysis, knowledge gaps, spending cuts and deregulation all pose threats to the natural environment.
It also notes that environmental progress has been made in areas covered by EU legislation and says UK opposition to the soil framework directive ignores the benefits of protecting soil and says the directive would increase research into toxicology and remediation.
"The UK has considerable expertise and experience in this area," it says.
"The benefits of increased demand for these services across Europe should also not be overlooked."
Planning policy, says EPUK, has incentivized use of brownfield land and reduced greenfield sprawl and DEFRA should do more to persuade other departments to give consideration to the natural world.
But planning has permitted loss of much high-quality agricultural land and open space and vast areas of soil have been permanently sealed.
It also urges DEFRA to do more to facilitate use of cleaned soils from contaminated sites.
The contaminated land regime, it says, is an example of localism but has knowledge gaps.
"The policy is struggling to be as effective as it might because it can be very difficult to determine whether the presence of contaminants in the ground is causing significant harm or pollution or has the potential to do so," says the response.
"This leads to wasted resources and duplication of effort. Central government needs to stimulate much needed toxicological research to enable local authorities to deliver their statutory duties effectively and to increase consistency of practice."
