Nature Restoration Levy 2026: England Rules Explained

On 10 September 2026, the Government made the Nature Restoration Levy Regulations 2026, and they came into force on 11 September 2026. If you open the version published on legislation.gov.uk, you meet pages of definitions, notices and formulas. Strip that back, and the question underneath is simple: when a development affects nature, who pays for the work meant to put that right? These rules sit under Part 3 of the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025. They give Natural England the job of collecting a levy from certain developments and using that money for conservation work. So this is not just a technical add-on to planning law. It is the payment system behind a new promise that, if development puts pressure on protected environmental features, the cost of repair should not be left to the public alone.

According to the explanatory note, the levy works where an Environmental Delivery Plan, usually shortened to EDP, identifies possible negative effects of development on the environment. A developer can then ask Natural England to let them pay the levy, and some EDPs can make that route mandatory. Once that route is used, certain environmental obligations connected to the development are disapplied under the Act, and the levy money is meant to fund the conservation measures set out in the EDP instead. **What this means:** the system moves part of environmental mitigation away from one site, one negotiation and one legal agreement. In theory, that can make planning faster and give Natural England a bigger, more organised pot of money for habitat work. But it also means you have to trust the plan, the maths and the enforcement, because the repair work may happen through a wider programme rather than directly on the building site.

In the legal wording, the person who takes on the bill becomes a liable person. That can happen because a developer formally assumes liability, because liability is transferred to somebody else, or, for some kinds of consent, because the committed developer is treated as liable from the start. Natural England then issues a liability notice saying who owes what and when it must be paid. The Regulations also use the idea of planning permission quite broadly. It can cover ordinary planning permission, development consent, listed building consent and even some marine licences. And there is an obvious loophole the rules try to close: if no one steps forward to assume liability for a development with planning permission, Natural England can put the liability onto the owners of the land. It can do that too when money is overdue and it has made reasonable efforts to recover it from the original liable people. So if you own the land, the regulations do not always let you stand back and say the developer alone should deal with it.

One of the clearest parts of the Regulations is also one of the strictest. For relevant schemes that have not already begun, the authority granting permission must attach a condition saying development must not begin until the levy has been paid, or, where Natural England allows instalments, until the first instalment has been paid. For development under a general consent, the same condition is treated as applying automatically in many cases. That matters because it ties the levy to the real-life moment when works start on the ground. Natural England must also notify the relevant authority when the payment condition has been met. So this is not supposed to be a vague promise to settle up later. In many cases, no lawful start means no diggers, no foundations and no first phase until the levy hurdle is cleared.

The amount is not picked out of thin air. The Regulations say Natural England must set rates through a charging schedule, with regard to the real and expected costs of conservation measures, monitoring, maintenance, administration and collection. The schedule can charge different rates depending on things such as the size of the development, the number of units, the zone it sits in, its intended use or the environmental impact it is expected to cause. From there, the levy amount is worked out using the charging schedule in force when Natural England accepted the request to pay, and then indexed using a construction-cost measure, with a fall-back to an Office for National Statistics inflation measure if needed. If the provisional amount is below £50, the levy is nil. If the development later changes in a material way, liable people must tell Natural England so the amount can be recalculated. **What this means for builders and planners:** the levy is not always a fixed number that sits still from day one. It can move with inflation, it can be paid by instalments if Natural England agrees, and it can rise if the scheme changes.

Where does the money go? The legislation.gov.uk text is quite firm on that point. Natural England must spend levy funds on conservation measures listed in the relevant EDP and linked to the environmental feature for which the levy was charged. The money can also cover delivery, management, maintenance, monitoring and some administrative costs tied to the EDP, including collection of the levy and appeals. That is important because it tells you this money is not meant to drift into a general spending pot. Natural England must keep separate accounts for each EDP and report on money outstanding and money spent in midpoint, final and annual reporting. If an EDP ends or the original measures no longer need funding, the funds still have to stay with the same environmental feature through remedial or additional conservation work.

The enforcement side is where the Regulations stop sounding polite. If nobody assumes liability when they should, Natural England may add a surcharge of 2% of the levy amount or £300, whichever is higher, so long as the levy is at least £1,000. If payment is late, further surcharges can be added after 30 days, six months and 12 months, each worth 5% of the overdue amount or £300, again using the £1,000 threshold. Interest also runs on overdue amounts at 2.5 percentage points above the Bank of England base rate. Natural England can go further than adding fees. It can issue a warning notice, then a stop notice, to halt specified development activity until payment is made, apart from works needed for health and safety. The levy also becomes a local land charge, can be recovered as a debt, and in serious cases can be enforced through the court against the land itself. In plain English, this is not a symbolic charge. The system is built to bite if people ignore it.

There are still routes to challenge decisions. Liable people can ask Natural England to review the levy amount, and landowners can ask for a review of how liability has been split between different land interests. After that, there are appeal rights to the Secretary of State on the amount, apportionment, surcharges, interest and warning or stop notices. While a review or appeal is live, the disputed amount is generally paused and cannot become overdue. The Regulations also let Natural England cancel acceptance of a request to pay in some situations, including where a planning application is not made within six months, permission is refused and not successfully challenged, or the permission later falls away. So the levy route is not simply opened once and kept forever. If you are learning this for the first time, the bigger point is worth holding onto. The Nature Restoration Levy is an attempt to make development fund nature recovery through a central system rather than a patchwork of separate site obligations. Whether that feels sensible or risky will depend on how strong the EDPs are and how firmly Natural England enforces the rules. But the lesson is clear: planning law is no longer only about where we build. It is also about who pays when building puts pressure on the natural world.