At the recorded meeting this Tuesday, Reeves is heard describing the planning blockage as being due to “some snails on the site that are a protected species or something”, adding: “They are microscopic snails that you cannot even see, and they haven’t been able to build there.” The chancellor appeared to be referring to the little whirlpool ramshorn snail, which is 5mm in diameter and one of the rarest creatures in Britain. It is an indicator of clean rivers and ponds as it is very sensitive to sewage pollution – so sensitive in fact that there are only three sites left in the UK where it exists.
This is what is known as an indicator species, meaning that it is important to protect their habitat because they are a sign that the water is clean, which means other creatures and plants are not at risk of pollution. The problem in the Sussex area is that there has not been sufficient infrastructure, such as reservoirs, built, so the homes are running out of water.
We have been in drought in England this year because of this failure to build. New homes can’t be built in some areas because they put our precious rivers at risk of being drained down to nothing, while other rivers are simultaneously being pumped full of sewage. Fixing and cleaning up Britain’s rivers – as the Labour government promised to do during last year’s general election – would also help increase the supply of clean water. But rather than get building pipes and reservoirs so the homes can be unlocked, Reeves, it appears, would rather blame a little snail.
This is the attitude which has led Geoffrey Lean, a respected UK environment correspondent who has been covering the patch for 55 years, to describe this government as the most nature-hating he has ever seen.
The government has been working on planning reforms that nature experts say put wildlife at risk. The reforms could include discarding the EU-derived habitats regulations that protect rare animals, and adding more pro-building amendments to the planning and infrastructure bill, which is going through parliament.
A few months ago I stood in a little sunlit-dappled grove in Kent and heard the clear, unmistakeable sound of nightingale song. In this tiny fragment of woodland, next to a derelict military base, these extremely rare birds had found a haven. Developers have been circling these woods for over a decade, thinking about how much money they could make in bulldozing their home, but so far have been stopped by planning laws. The same laws Reeves and Keir Starmer are actively trying to repeal.
There are stories like this all over the country, of nature at risk from development. Homes are sorely needed (as a millennial I am acutely aware of that) but so is clean water, and we should be able to build them alongside protecting some of the few fragments of habitat where rare birds still make their nests and sing.
And we shouldn’t only care about what is in front of us, and what we can see. As planning lawyer Alexa Culver told me: “There are lots of elements of nature that are essential to social and economic prosperity, and are microscopic, that we can’t see. Air, for example, being one of them.”
What Culver is saying here is that we all exist in an ecosystem. Get rid of the snail habitat, and you’re hurting myriad other creatures too, not to mention depleting the aquifer on which we depend for clean water. And housing exists in a system too; we can’t build homes that aren’t connected to water sources, and that can’t get rid of their sewage. It’s a building and infrastructure failure, perhaps even a more pressing one than the housing crisis, that this rainy country is at risk of running out of water.
But it’s much easier to chuckle with tech bros about this silly little snail, than it is to fix these broken systems, isn’t it?
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