Corporate report

An independent review of Defra’s regulatory landscape: foreword and executive summary

Published 2 April 2025

Foreword

This has been a tremendously interesting and important review to have undertaken. Thank you to the Secretary of State for asking me to lead it.

I have worked and published on many aspects of regulation in different sectors over many years but came relatively new to environmental regulation.

The issue of how to frame and organise regulation so that it efficiently delivers the right outcomes, whilst being easy to navigate for customers, has been at the core of this review, as it is in all discussions around regulation. Whilst regulation needs to be used to deliver these outcomes, it should never become stifling red tape and antithetical to growth and innovation.

Also at the core of this review has been the need to have independence of regulators, who should operate with a large degree of predictability and consistency; but also need to make sure that they closely link to the elected government’s policy agenda and with enough discretion to do the right and often common-sense thing in the right place without being trapped by legal or cultural factors.

In environmental regulation, where we must protect and enhance nature and the environment but also not cut off or make excessively expensive new infrastructure and development, some of these issues are even more complex, as we seek to do the right things for both nature recovery and for economic growth.

I spent the last decade plus working in the charity and non-profit sector. I understand the passion and concern that these organisations have and the people whose voice and concerns they reflect. The environmental and nature NGOs do a fine job in holding government’s feet to the fire on these issues. They need to continue being a key voice but are not the only stakeholder.

The current system of environmental regulation was set up in good faith, but time and factors like resource constraints, legal findings, case law, EU exit, climate change, and ministerial merry-gorounds under the last government mean it is not now working as anyone would want. The system is also now inefficient and difficult for customers to navigate. It needs to work in a fundamentally different way, to become a system focused on delivering positive outcomes for nature and the environment and to be an aid not an impediment to sustainable growth.

In navigating this field, I hope that this review helps the government think through how to handle all this. I make some important and strong proposals, point at new directions in others. More generally, I hope it gives a set of ideas that can be debated by all stakeholders as we go forward looking to find ways to protect and enhance our natural world while allowing development to take place and customers of all kinds to have a better experience than they do now.

Thanks to all those who gave their time to talk to us - the regulators, environmental NGOs, developers, consultants, farmers, business groups, civil servants, politicians and academics. Thanks also to those who hosted me on various visits to get a better feel of how things work on the ground and in the field. And thanks to the excellent Defra team that supported me through this speedy review, helping coordinate meetings and helping me think things through, whilst never afraid to confront issues even when that led to criticism of their own department.

Dan Corry, April 2025

Executive summary

Environmental regulation should be about making sure we are protecting and enhancing our natural world. This includes considering and mitigating our impacts on the Barbastelle bats which roost close to HS2, the fish which swim close to Hinckley Point C, and the Kittiwakes which fly near to offshore wind turbines. But in mitigating our impacts, we shouldn’t be rigidly protecting everything exactly as it is, at any cost. Our approach must also make ample space for innovation, development and growth. These aims should not be seen as in direct conflict – it is not and must not be seen as a zero-sum game, even if short run trade-offs will sometimes need to be made.

It is the contention of this review – based on the many conversations I have had and the evidence I have received – that our regulatory system is not working as well as it should to support either nature recovery or economic growth. To improve the system, I have evolved five themes, with recommendations supporting each. While holding back at this stage from major institutional change in terms of the boundaries of the regulators, these recommendations - when implemented, and in combination - would create a very different dynamic and set of behaviours by all actors which I believe would lead to better outcomes all round.

Understandably, environmental groups may be nervous about whether some of the recommendations – giving regulators more discretion, focusing more on value for money and growth, and considering changes to important regulations – could, if badly used, cause the environment and nature to suffer. But everything I have heard and learned during this review suggests that the current system does not work as well as it could for nature and the environment, let alone for growth. The temptation to, “always keep a-hold of nurse for fear of finding something worse” is natural but is surely not the right approach to be taken to deliver positive change.

The review is very clear that there must be guardrails around any ‘constrained’ discretion, that nature enhancement must be the core purpose of environmental regulation and that changes to regulations are to allow a wider perspective to be taken that is good for nature overall. We can and will do better for economic growth but also for nature and the environment if we reform the system. The recommendations will, in combination, work to reduce the high-cost and low-nature scenarios we have been seeing. This will depend on progress made in a few key areas, including; reforming how regulators operate, with increased focus on place-based outcomes using constrained discretion; greater focus from Defra on facilitating infrastructure projects in the right locations, with more emphasis on proportionality and cost-effectiveness of outcomes for nature and economic development; and potentially reforming the Habitats Regulations and how they are applied, whilst ensuring consistency with international obligations.

Focus on outcomes, scale and proportionality, with constrained discretion

Defra needs to deliver on both nature recovery and on economic growth, ensuring that neither are in conflict in the medium and long term, although there might be short term trade-offs. However, it is not currently effectively delivering on either, with risk averse decision-making heavily influenced by a long-entrenched precautionary principle^{[footnote 1]} to protect the current landscape, inhibiting growth and missing the opportunity to deliver place-based nature renewal at scale. A new approach to the regulatory system is needed.

There has been consistent feedback about Defra regulators focusing too much on ‘micro’ site specific outcomes rather than meaningful ‘macro’ outcomes that are right for the needs of a place and easy for people to understand. Protecting the status-quo of nature as it exists now, site by site, is unlikely to deliver the nature recovery needed linked to environmental targets, and it slows down development of housing and infrastructure. The alignment between the Government’s more ambitious targets, particularly those in the Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP), and the way regulation works, is far too weak, as these do not effectively translate into the regulations being used and subsequent on-the-ground regulatory practices.

Defra needs to find a way to more clearly set the outcomes it wants regulators to achieve, and let them get on with delivering these outcomes, using ‘constrained discretion’ and flexibility, within the law. Emphasis should be on achieving outcomes at scale, ideally using fit-for-purpose regulations. It also needs to find a way of ensuring clarity, from a spatial perspective, for how the multitude of nature and planning strategies come together in a way which local authorities and combined authorities can understand and deliver, in partnership with regulators. I recommend the following actions:

Recommendation 1: Introduce and publish a refreshed set of outcomes for regulators, linked to the Environmental Improvement Plan, with a clear accountability framework involving measurable outcomes that are monitored regularly by the department and reported on to Ministers and the public.

Recommendation 2: Publish new Strategic Policy Statements for all regulators, starting with the Environment Agency (EA) and Natural England (NE), with the aim of restating the Government’s priorities and mandating regulators to use constrained discretion to deliver the desired outcomes, taking account of the place-based dynamics, within the law. These statements should be consistent across all regulators to avoid the current situation where different instructions create confusion and inefficiency. Regulators have indicated that the current lack of uniformity in guidance is counterproductive.

Recommendation 3: Establish a Defra Infrastructure Board to accelerate the delivery of significant projects by providing early and strategic perspectives on priorities and outcomes. This should include a rolling, forward-looking pipeline of Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects and other wider complex projects where relevant; in-depth lessons learned from previous projects; working closely with developers to understand specific barriers; use of Imperative Reasons of Overriding Public Interest (IROPI) where needed to justify projects; and a transfer of legal risk from regulators to the department. This Board should ensure regulatory decisions balance costs and proportionality, escalating high-cost or disproportionate issues to Ministers. In the long term, the Government should improve and strengthen the outdated Regulators’ Code, to clarify the role of regulators in considering the costs of compliance and proportionality for those being regulated.

Recommendation 4: Consolidate the statutory duties, principles and codes of Defra regulators to a core set, reflecting the Government’s priorities and helping to provide discretion, e.g. a duty to deliver on/consider climate change/net zero. This will address the increase in regulator-specific and regulator-generic legal obligations and resulting ‘regulatory overload’ which has emerged over time, resulting in confusion for those who are regulated whilst also weakening accountability. Further work is needed here to scope the legal obligations and to ensure consistency with any wider approaches. Updated duties will need to be consistent with refreshed outcomes and strategic policy statements.

Recommendation 5: Support better cooperation between regulators and appoint a lead regulator for all major projects in which multiple regulators have an interest. Some changes to regulatory structures or regulations would be necessary to grant a lead regulator authority to make decisions on behalf of other regulators. In the meantime, Defra should promote more information sharing and clearer processes for major projects. This should be agreed by regulators at the outset of projects, with emphasis on projects which represent significant private sector investment and/or have a high degree of complexity. This should include developing a framework that outlines how a lead regulator would operate in sharing information and supporting decision making, and the criteria for appointing a lead regulator. In addition, where projects interact with a single regulator, there should always be a named contact provided.

Recommendation 6: Assess potential for regulators to have targeted pay flexibility so they can employ and retain staff, particularly specialist staff. This should be considered as part of the Spending Review settlement and involve seeking specialist pay rates, or more flexible pay bands, especially for positions that require unique skills or are difficult to fill. This can help ensure that salaries are competitive with the private sector and experienced staff are retained.

Recommendation 7: Ensure regulators are devoting the right balance of time and resourcing to driving outcomes including growth. Defra should review this as part of the Spending Review settlement and ensure that operating models (a) are maximised to attract private sector investment; (b) allow regulators to recover the full cost of services, removing barriers which exist at present; (c) consider what new approaches are needed, especially in the EA to avoid staff being pulled away from essential regulatory functions to deal with emergencies.

Recommendation 8: Use Local Nature Recovery Strategies across the 48 strategy areas as a basis for building and embedding ‘local Environmental Improvement Plans (EIPs)’ which cover all elements of the national EIP, which Combined Authorities can work with local partners to deliver. This consolidation of various local plans and strategies is a major task which should build on the opportunities of the Devolution White Paper to set out clear environmental plans at a local level.

Recommendation 9: Review the funding streams connected to place-based delivery, for example biodiversity net gain, to ensure they can be used as flexibly as possible to help local authorities and regulators deliver the Government’s Environmental Improvement Plan and Local Nature Recovery Strategy ambitions.

Recommendation 10: Set up a programme of experiments or sandboxes where regulators identify projects where they will waive regulations and measure the results. Project scope will need to identify any barriers. This could be done, for example, with developers on specific sites to see how outcomes can be delivered. This approach can help stimulate a culture of experimentation and permission without undue risk, whilst avoiding any harm to the environment, with consideration given to legal powers needed where relevant. The approach would work well for areas where improvements are being sought, for example on nature recovery or port infrastructure developments, rather than on areas where risk is being managed, for example on biosecurity.

Untangle and tidy ‘green tape’ to ensure process-light and adaptive regulation

Multiple adjectives were used during this review to describe Defra regulations, including outdated, inconsistent, layered and labyrinthine. The volume (over 3,000) and complexity of the regulations and the amount of associated guidance makes life difficult for customers, affecting both their economic activity and their ability to comply. A whole industry of lawyers and consultants is in place to advise on how to meet these regulatory requirements. In addition, Defra’s statute book is largely inherited from the EU and there is a strong view that the law is being applied to the UK in a significantly more risk-averse way than in other EU nations. Many of the regulations are out of date and duplicative.

While all these issues have clearly at times been frustrating and blocks to growth, we have only rarely had instances suggested to us where development was stopped by environmental regulation alone.

A bonfire of regulations is not the way forward. Instead, a targeted ongoing programme of streamlining and modernising is needed to ensure regulations are relevant to EIP targets, fit for the future and provide discretion to deliver good outcomes for nature and growth in a place. Without changing regulations to make them fit for climate change and to bring them up to date with modern ecology, the entire system will remain based on protecting what we have now, rather than looking to the future. Specific actions, and regulations to improve, are proposed. I recommend:

Recommendation 11: Scope a rolling programme of reform for specific regulations, being clear what can be done rapidly, where the quickest wins are and what will take longer. This review suggests areas of focus, but the department needs to work rapidly to scope them and establish the programme. Pending fuller scoping, early priorities for reform are: The Water Environment (Water Framework Directive) (England and Wales) Regulations 2017; The Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017; The Reduction and Prevention of Agricultural Diffuse Pollution Regulations 2018; and The Environmental Permitting Regulations 2016. Some of this is already under way.

Recommendation 12: Defra should swiftly develop plans to reform slurry application and storage to help address diffuse water pollution from agricultural sources. This is likely to involve changing the Farming Rules for Water and wider regulations relating to slurry application and storage. This should aim for a single set of regulations which farmers can understand and comply with. 

Recommendation 13: The work to update the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016 to allow regulators more flexibility to take sensible, risk-based decisions should be accelerated because it is particularly important in supporting net-zero and circular economy priorities, for example facilitating the development of low carbon industrial infrastructure, and for ensuring remediated soil is not unnecessarily categorised as waste.

Recommendation 14: The recommended programme of reform for specific regulations should also assess instances of overlap and duplication in the application of regulations, with the aim of streamlining priority areas, for example in the marine environment, where multiple regulators are involved in assessing the same applications for port infrastructure. Both the regulations and the regulatory practices need examining and streamlining.

Deploy a fair and consistent ‘thin green line’ on regulatory compliance, with trusted partners earning autonomy

Multiple organisations provided examples of what they consider to be inconsistencies and failings in Defra’s approach to licensing, permitting, monitoring, enforcement and sanctions. On licensing and permitting, Defra is considered too slow and lacking in transparency. On monitoring and enforcement, in some areas such as farming the historic complexity of regulation (150+ pieces) makes it challenging for farmers to comply with regulations on agricultural water pollution. In other areas, such as waste, the scale of waste criminality, including illegal dumping, waste sites and misdescription of waste, causes significant cost to the economy and undermines the economic activity of those who are compliant and trust in the system from customers. Defra needs to significantly sharpen the approach to how it issues licenses and permits, and how it then monitors and enforces compliance.

Any system of regulation requires public trust. At present, the complexity of the regulations contributes to failures in delivery and to gaining and retaining the public’s trust. Improvements are needed to the regulatory system to make it clearer how to comply, and to support an increase in ‘self-regulation’ where appropriate which would also allow the regulators to use resources on the areas and organisations of most concern. I recommend:

Recommendation 15: Allow trusted nature conservation and environmental partners and other organisations with good track records greater autonomy, through memoranda of understanding (MOUs) and wider deployment of ‘class licences’ enabling them to move fast on restoring nature without applying to regulators for multiple permissions. Criteria would need to be developed to ensure that a consistent approach is taken for how autonomy is earned and then recognised and retained. This should include the previous track record of the organisation in applying for permits and/or licences, organisational compliance and positive real-world impact. Some monitoring will be needed and the MOU quickly and publicly rescinded if compliance is found wanting.

Recommendation 16: Defra should rapidly review and rewrite its existing catalogue of compliance guidance to ensure it is fit for purpose, removing any duplication, ambiguity and inconsistency. The aim of the review should be a streamlined, clear and up to date catalogue, signposted for each sector so that it is easy to navigate. Stakeholders and customers should be fully involved in this process.

Recommendation 17: Regulators should commence more frequent risk-based monitoring, using real-time and digital approaches. Clear strategic plans should be produced by each regulator for how they are taking a risk-based approach to monitoring, as well as their approach to making their monitoring information more accessible to the public, using live, up-to-date, data to support holding businesses and regulators to account.

Recommendation 18: Defra should review the entire approach to enforcement and sanctions for environmental regulation to bring as much consistency as possible in the approaches taken for different offences. This review should consider where changes to legislation might be needed and aim to create tougher penalties for deliberate non-compliance and persistent offenders, for example in the waste sector, with regulators able to issue speedy fines for minor offences without going through the Court system. 

Recommendation 19: The Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) plays an important role in providing independent scrutiny to Government action on the environment. However, as with our general approach, the OEP must ensure its focus is on outcomes not just process. Their recent report on the previous Government’s progress towards delivering the Environment Act targets helpfully supports the need to go further and faster. Consideration should be given as to how the OEP can increase focus on the outcomes that are desired and support regulators to take more risk to achieve those goals within the Government’s wider objectives.

Recommendation 20: A short review is needed to assess the current landscape of chargeable services and cost recovery across Defra, so it can go further in applying the polluter pays principle, to support the Department in providing faster and more transparent digital services to customers.

Unlock the flow of private sector green finance to support nature restoration whilst better targeting public sector finance

Current flows of private finance into nature are estimated at £100 million per year, with potential for significant growth. The private sector is incentivised to invest in nature through nature obligations (biodiversity net gain (BNG) and the nutrients market); nature based economic infrastructure (nature-based solutions (NBS) and natural flood management); and voluntary markets (including the Woodland Carbon Code and the Peatland Code). Barriers to investment highlighted to this review include concerns about the complexity of the market, market oversight, governance and integrity.

Given the UK’s financial and scientific expertise, Defra should look to set up a nature market accelerator body to incentivise investment in nature, to drive momentum towards the EIP target of mobilising at least £500 million of private finance per year into nature’s recovery in England by 2027, and more than £1 billion per year by 2030. In addition to stimulating green finance, this review also proposes actions for ensuring flows of public finance are balancing food production and nature outcomes and actions to improve current schemes incentivising investment in nature. I recommend:

Recommendation 21: Defra should explore launching a Nature Market Accelerator to bring much needed coherence to nature markets and accelerate investment. This should be small, focussed and industry funded to provide independent assurance on the governance and standardised processes needed to guide and protect the interests of suppliers of nature-based projects; investors in biodiversity and ecosystem services; and other intermediaries and third parties involved in trading. Clear market rules and governance will be essential in delivering public goods and services. Further functions could include more hands-on intervention including identifying projects and matching of projects to investors.

Recommendation 22: Given the UK’s financial and scientific expertise, Government should publish a call for evidence on further opportunities to increase private investment into nature from economic sectors who impact upon or benefit from our shared natural capital, for example through the role nature-based solutions (NBS) can play as economic infrastructure. 

Recommendation 23: Proposed nature-based solutions, such as wetland mosaics for flood alleviation, currently go through full planning permission, equivalent to major infrastructure, which increases time and cost. Defra should conduct a six-month sprint, with industry, on removing the barriers to using NBS to flooding and pollution including planning, benefit-to-cost ratios, orders of magnitude of risk, biodiversity net gain, and licensing, and then propose a way of reducing or removing these. Scientific evidence is still emerging on the potential application of NBS to tackling pollution, however there are examples of constructed wetlands reducing phosphorous in treated wastewater. A ‘state of the science’ assessment should consider the very latest evidence on the viability of NBS in this context.

Recommendation 24: Defra needs to quickly evaluate and improve the current compliance nature market schemes (including biodiversity net gain (BNG) and nutrients credits) to make any early adjustments needed to maximise their delivery. The schemes should be streamlined and simplified, with consideration given to whether there are different ways to aggregate BNG credits to help local authorities, farmers and landowners deliver wider environmental improvements.

Recommendation 25: Following the agricultural transition, there is an opportunity to set out publicly how rural grants and payments can be used by farmers and landowners, in combination with green finance, to balance food production and nature outcomes. The production of Defra’s 25-year farming roadmap will be an opportunity to do this. This should set out where grants and payments have delivered multiple outcomes, how they can be integrated with green finance, and where they will need to continue to evolve to meet the needs of farmers and food production whilst delivering nature recovery outcomes.

Shift regulators to be more digital, more real-time and more innovative with partners

There is a clear sense that Defra regulators continue to have analogue systems, combined with legacy digital systems, in a fast-moving digital age which prevents them from sharing their data with each other and their customers, whilst weakening their monitoring of outcomes and making their service to customers slow to the point of failure. The technology which now supports our everyday lives, including satellites, sensors and Artificial Intelligence (AI), needs better harnessing to drive simplification and streamlining into the way in which Defra regulates. Defra’s digital transformation needs to be turbo-charged, whilst also geared to delivering new processes against outcomes for customers.

Opening data to the public is essential to foster transparency and trust. This openness should be complemented by welcoming, not fearing, citizen science alongside a strong emphasis on accountability to Parliament to ensure regulatory actions are scrutinised and aligned with public interest. Further to this, the boards overseeing digital and other transformations need to be creative, outcome focused and not risk averse. I recommend:

Recommendation 26: Two ‘digital champions’ (a Minister and a senior official) should be appointed to accelerate the digital transformation of Defra and its regulators, setting priorities for investment and publishing an external plan within the next six months on how the customer experience and regulatory outcomes will be improved by the changes, and where any remaining paper processes will be removed. This should also cover how Defra will increase the transparency of the work of regulators by making live monitoring information accessible to the public, so they can see for themselves how regulators are improving the environment in their area. External experts should help guide this work.

Recommendation 27: Defra needs to build on the early progress being made to deliver a permitting portal which will show the progress of applications and increase transparency, by continuing to accelerate this work and ensuring consistency of approach across regulators, with a clear business case relating to the economic growth benefits from the investment. Staged delivery should be put in place across 2025 and 2026.

Recommendation 28: Use the momentum of the Defra Group AI Strategy 2030 to identify three high-ambition applications of AI which will (1) build Defra’s role as a digital regulator, (2) support both economic growth and nature recovery outcomes, and (3) have an economy of scale across regulators. These applications should be generated from a cross-organisational ‘bottom up’ approach and be supported by Defra’s Ministerial ‘digital champion’. These applications could include, for example, applying AI to the geo-spatial information held by Defra to assess habitat changes; auto-filtering of permit or license applications, or using monitoring information to automatically trigger inspections.

Recommendation 29: Defra should fast track the sharing of data across regulators and externally, making external commitments to do more. Understanding and interrogating the huge amount of existing data Defra already holds as an organisation should be a high priority in Defra’s digital and data transformation strategy, with a much greater presumption on information sharing, and increasing the amount of timely (released as close to real-time as possible), sustained and useful (minimum level of aggregation) data made publicly available. This will build organisational efficiency and an economy of scale, whilst building trust in our regulatory landscape as ‘citizen scientists’ have increasing access to our data.

Next steps

While this review is not calling for major institutional change or for a bonfire of regulations, it is calling for a radical repositioning and repurposing of environmental regulation. As system theory shows us, if you can work out the key inhibitors and target them, then a group of ‘smaller’ changes can fundamentally change the way a system works.

The five strategic themes put forward by this review, supported by 29 recommendations, will have a system level impact, transforming the regulatory landscape and the culture of those operating within it. This transformation requires both immediate action and long-term commitment. The aim is for recommendations which can improve how the regulatory system operates in the short term, while pointing to where longer-term reform of underpinning regulations is needed. These actions will produce a shift in the regulatory system towards becoming more of a partner, rather than an obstacle, in achieving sustainable economic growth, whilst delivering improvements to our natural world. Wider benefits will include an improved customer experience, with less valuable time spent trying to comply, and increased public sector efficiency with regulators no longer tripping over each other. The table below highlights the recommendations which will most help growth, nature and customers.

Five actions to help growth

• Recommendation 2: Publish new Strategic Policy Statements for all regulators restating the Government’s priorities and mandating regulators to use constrained discretion to deliver desired outcomes, considering place-based dynamics.

• Recommendation 10: Set up a programme of regulatory sandboxes where regulators are able to waive regulations and measure the results, to facilitate cultural change within environmental regulation to be more positive towards innovation

• Recommendation 11: Scope a rolling programme of reform for specific regulations (e.g., Habitat Regulations, and Water Framework Directive), focussing on those that can be achieved rapidly.

• Recommendation 3: Establish a Defra Infrastructure Board to accelerate the delivery of significant projects. This should include a rolling forward-looking pipeline of Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects and other projects.

• Recommendation 21: Improve coherence within nature markets and accelerate investment through a Government Nature Market Accelerator.

Five actions to help nature

• Recommendation 1: Introduce and publish a refreshed set of outcomes for regulators, linked to the Environmental Improvement Plan, with a clear accountability framework involving measurable outcomes.

• Recommendation 15: Allow trusted nature conservation and environmental partners and other organisations with good track records greater autonomy, through MOUs.

• Recommendation 17: More frequent risk-based monitoring, using real-time and digital approaches where possible, with information more accessible to the public.

• Recommendation 18: Tougher penalties for deliberate non-compliance and persistent offenders, for example in the waste sector, with regulators able to issue speedy fines for minor offences.

• Recommendation 23: A six-month sprint, with industry, on removing the barriers to using Nature-Based Solutions to flooding and pollution.

Five actions to help customers and stakeholders

• Recommendation 5: A single lead environmental regulator for every major project (with lead contact), with more co-design of solutions at the outset.
• Recommendation 12: Reform Farming Rules for Water and provide a new approach to slurry application and management to help address diffuse water pollution, creating a circular economy for nutrients and boosting farming productivity.
• Recommendation 13: Review and reform of the permitting system and more use of District Licensing approaches.
• Recommendation 16: More support to ensure compliance via improved access to advice and simplified guidance, alongside higher penalties for repeating offences and those wilfully non-compliant.
• Recommendation 27: Improved technology and transparency to allow customers to see in real-time the progress of their applications, appeals, etc.

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1. The REUL Act 2023 abolished all EU ‘interpretive effects’ remaining on the UK statute book. This included general principles such as the precautionary principle. The legacy of this still underpins legislation Defra is responsible for, including the Habitats Regulations and legislation relating to pesticides, invasive species, water quality, animal welfare and animal disease control. The Environmental Principles policy statement is helpfully more specific on how this and four other principles should be applied when making policy. ↩