Henry Mills, CEO of Burlingtons Biodiversity Solutions, welcomes the call to shift from process-heavy compliance to outcome-based assessment in environmental regulation.
Corry’s Regulatory Reforms: A Blueprint for Change or a Familiar Facade?
The Corry Review has delivered what many in development and policy circles have long called for: a serious attempt to reconcile environmental regulation with the urgent need to build – homes, infrastructure, and climate resilience.
Yet if this reform package is to succeed, it must do more than rebrand the same dysfunctional architecture. It must confront the real source of regulatory drag: not merely the number of agencies involved, but the deep institutional fragmentation, risk aversion, and proceduralism that underpin them.
A Step Forward – But Only If Followed Through
The review is, in many respects, the right diagnosis. Environmental regulation in the UK is not just complicated; it is often contradictory. Developers routinely navigate guidance from Natural England, the Environment Agency, Historic England, multiple local authorities, and biodiversity net gain consultants – only to find the advice misaligned or out of sync with national policy.
The review rightly points out that the issue is not regulation per se, but the way it is managed and interpreted. The call to shift from process-heavy compliance to outcome-based assessment is welcome. But we have heard this before. Similar ambitions – from the 2008 Planning Act to the 2016 Housing and Planning Act and 2020 Planning White Paper – have come and gone, often with bold headlines but little institutional follow-through. Government consistently underestimates the institutional resistance to change inside its own regulatory bodies.
Unless this reform is accompanied by a shift in culture – not just structure – it risks becoming yet another technical improvement that leaves the fundamentals untouched.
Will This Actually Accelerate Development?
In theory, yes – and particularly for nationally significant infrastructure. The lead regulator model could finally introduce much-needed coherence and consistency across complex schemes, preventing delays caused by conflicting opinions between agencies.
But here lies the critical test: is the lead regulator truly empowered to make decisions, or merely another channel through which all the same consultations must pass?
Take the example of HS2. Years of planning delays were not due to a lack of regulatory presence – there were plenty. The problem was a lack of integrated authority. Environmental conditions imposed by one body conflicted with planning conditions from another. If the lead regulator cannot resolve such conflicts – and instead, must defer back to the very agencies it is meant to coordinate – the reform becomes administrative theatre.
We do not need another facilitator. We need a strategic authority with the legal mandate to balance competing environmental, housing, and infrastructure priorities and to act decisively.
Comparisons That Matter: The Danger of Institutional Creep
Take the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP), established in 2021 to safeguard environmental standards post-Brexit. Lauded at its inception, the OEP is now under pressure – not for failing to act, but for lacking the power to do more than observe and report. Despite launching high-profile investigations into government failings on water pollution and sewage discharges, it remains a watchdog with little bite. Its findings can highlight systemic breaches of law, but it cannot compel enforcement or impose consequences. As recent coverage shows, even serious concerns raised by the OEP have been met with bureaucratic deflection. If the proposed lead regulator follows a similar model – granted oversight without authority – it risks becoming another powerless actor in an already congested system. Worse still, it may serve as a convenient scapegoat for failure, absorbing public blame while decision-making remains untouched.
On Equity and Scale
One often-overlooked risk in the current reform narrative is the assumption that “trusted” organisations – such as the National Trust – should receive regulatory exemptions. While this may improve delivery for large conservation charities, it creates a two-tier system.
Smaller landowners, community-led projects, and local developers are still left to navigate the same complex permission structures. For true reform, we must democratise simplification. Streamlining must not become the preserve of the well-connected; it must be extended to those who lack the resources to hire planning consultants and legal advisers.
Structural Reform Requires More Than Digital Portals
Finally, the ambition to simplify environmental assessments and permissions through digital tools and single points of access is encouraging, but it cannot be mistaken for systemic change. Technology is not a substitute for governance.
There is precedent here: the Planning Portal, launched over two decades ago, was designed to centralise and digitise planning applications. While it improved transparency, it failed to speed up decision-making because the underlying processes remained complex, under-resourced, and siloed. If Defra’s proposed “single planning portal” does not come with integrated standards, cross-agency accountability, and statutory decision deadlines, it will become yet another platform that centralises frustration rather than function.
Conclusion: Investment Needs Confidence, Not Just Speed
Ultimately, these reforms will only unlock capital if they provide certainty. The property and investment markets do not fear regulation; they fear unpredictability. Timeframes that shift, guidance that contradicts, approvals that reverse – these are what deter capital.
If the Corry reforms can bring consistency of interpretation, clarity of responsibility, and transparency of timeline – across all regions and sectors – they will do more for economic growth than any tax break or funding pledge. Because in a system plagued by delay and confusion, certainty is the real accelerant.
Henry’s comments were published in Property Week, 10 April 2025.
