Jurisdiction: United Kingdom
Commencement: 1st May 2025
Amends: Environment Act 2021
Mini Summary
The Environment Act 2021 aims to improve air and water quality, tackle waste, improve biodiversity and make other environmental improvements.
This Environment Act 2021 has two main functions:
- To give a legal framework for environmental governance in the UK.
- To bring in measures for improvement of the environment in relation to waste, resource efficiency, air quality, water, nature and biodiversity, and conservation.
Duties
There are no direct duties for most organisations under this Act. There are duties for the Government, some public bodies and other organisations, such as the OEP. These are described in the Summary above. Where duties have been made that may affect other organisations or businesses, this is through amendments to other legislation which are linked above and in the Updates section of any relevant legislation.
Amendment
The following sections, which introduce biodiversity gain requirements as a condition for granting planning permission, come into force on 1st May 2025:
- Section 98 (biodiversity gain as condition of planning permission); and
- certain parts of Schedule 14 (biodiversity gain as condition of planning permission).