Environmental campaigners in Ealing have written to all three Ealing MPs to ask them to oppose plans to change environmental laws that are being proposed in plans by Liz Truss’s Government.
The Brent River & Canal Society (BRCS), which campaigned successfully for the creation of the Brent River Park in the 1970s, has strongly condemned the proposals and is asking local MPs Dr Rupa Huq, Ealing Central & Acton, Virendra Sharma, Ealing Southall and James Murray, Ealing North to also fight them.
The Government is proposing to revoke many existing environmental laws by 31 December 2023. This includes rules which currently protect natural sites and their wildlife from damaging development.
BRCS is concerned that the planned change of the current regulations would see many environmental protections no longer in operation which they say will cause damage to conservation, biodiversity, poor water quality and not allow nature to grow.
BRCS Chair Nic Ferriday said: “This is a truly shocking proposal. The Government committed to legally binding targets to start nature’s recovery by 2030 and Ealing Council adopted its Climate and Ecological Emergency Strategy in 2021 and its Biodiversity Action Plan in 2022. We have only 8 years left and ripping up existing protections will make these targets, on which our lives and those of our wildlife depend, impossible to achieve.”
BRCS trustee Katie Boyles added: “It is essential that the legal protections for nature are maintained and not ripped out or weakened within new ‘Investment Zones’, or elsewhere. We are in a Climate and Ecological Emergency. The government should be strengthening environmental planning rules, not removing them. We are asking our MPs to help us fight these proposals and to support us in our campaign to protect biodiversity and green spaces both UK wide and locally on their doorstep.”
Ben Morris of BRCS and the Clean Up the River Brent campaign commented: “The message from our waterways could not be clearer. We need higher standards and a greater enforcement of those standards. The government must play its part in protecting our environment, or we will see a spiral of extinction, culminating in our own.”
Other groups who are opposing the Government’s proposals include the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the Wildlife Trusts and the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England.
The BRCS also asked Ealing Southall MP Virendra Sharma to rethink his support for building a stadium and sports pitches on Warren Farm which, the society says, would cause mass biodiversity loss and irreversible damage to wildlife on this rewilded green space.
The BRCS is asking its supporters to write to their local MPs.
Warren Farm Nature Reserve has provided more details on its website in a call to action to engage residents across Ealing.
