In theory, yes. But this bill would only make contributing to the Nature Restoration Fund instead of doing site-by-site mitigations an option if there is a government-approved Environmental Delivery Plan (EDP) in place for the environmental issue the developer is trying to mitigate.

For example, an EDP for river pollution (what’s known as ‘nutrient neutrality’) might involve a Nature Restoration Fund paying to upgrade sewage treatment facilities. So if their development needed to mitigate against river pollution, they could opt-out of the extremely bureaucratic (and expensive) status quo.

So long as the Nature Restoration Fund’s contributions set in the EDPs are not excessive, this will make development a lot easier.

The big risk is that the Government’s delivery bodies, like Natural England, fail to put enough delivery plans in place, or find that putting EDPs in place for certain species is extremely difficult in practice.