Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what plans he has to introduce practical measures for offsetting phosphates being discharged from homes.

The main sources of phosphates in the water environment are from agricultural land, and discharges from wastewater treatment works. The approach being taken by Natural England in response to housing applications in water sensitive European site catchments (Special Areas of Conservation, Special Protection Areas, Ramsar sites), where nutrients have been identified as a specific reason for sites failing condition, is to require development to demonstrate nutrient neutrality.

The nutrient-neutral approach ensures that development does not lead to an increase in nutrients entering the European site, therefore enabling development to meet the tests of the Habitats Regulations. The approach enables development to mitigate for their nutrient impacts, by reducing existing nutrient inputs from other sources, such as through securing land use change from intensive agriculture. Changing land use from intensive agriculture to woodland, restored grassland, wetlands etc. not only reduces nutrients entering watercourses but also has significant biodiversity, carbon, and natural flood management benefits. Public access is also encouraged, potentially providing significant new public access to the countryside with all the health and wellbeing benefits associated.

Another mechanism for achieving nutrient neutrality is to create engineered wetlands at the outfall of a wastewater treatment works. This approach works by running the treated wastewater through a wetland prior to it discharging into a watercourse, removing additional nutrients in the process.

Over the past few years, several innovative and more strategic schemes have been developed to deliver more effective site protections. We have proposed an amendment to the Environment Bill to provide for Protected Site Strategies. This will provide legal underpinning for such strategic approaches and support their development. They will be particularly useful where evidence shows that the condition of protected sites is affected by a range of problems.