Our reaction to the 2025 November budget

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has delivered her much anticipated budget statement today.

We were pleased to see the commitment to more skills support for local planning departments. We need a properly funded planning system that works to ensure homes and infrastructure are delivered in a way that benefits people and mitigates harm to the planet. But this commitment will achieve little, if environmental protections are watered-down for the benefit of big housebuilders and energy giants.

Worryingly the budget endorses the recommendations of the recently published Nuclear Regulatory Taskforce report, including the scrapping of nature protections for new nuclear projects. New nuclear power stations have no place in National Parks and protected landscapes.

Rather than building energy infrastructure in our treasured landscapes and identikit executive homes across the countryside, the government could be investing in rooftop solar and the regeneration of rundown urban centres by building the affordable homes people need and safeguarding green spaces. England alone has enough brownfield land for 1.4 million homes and rooftops could generate more than 60% of the UK’s solar energy target.