Recent attempts to build new towns such as Ebbsfleet have seen construction held up by the planning system, particularly around environmental protections. The problem is not the fact but the process of environmental protection which requires not just a strategic assessment but detailed assessments for each individual project. This has increased costs and created huge delays and in some cases prevented delivery. For new towns to be delivered at pace, we should adopt a strategic, low-risk approach to environmental assessment with the requirement to produce an environmental impact assessment suspended on a development-by-development basis provided the impact of the entire town has been assessed. This could follow the approach of offshore wind in the British Energy Security Strategy which allows for environmental considerations to be made at a strategic level, rather than on a project-by-project basis. This both speeds up development and delivers better results for nature.