The Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act takes forward the recommendations in the Haskins Report and implements key elements of the 2004 Rural Strategy that set out measures to radically reform the structures and bodies needed to deliver the Government’s priorities for rural communities and the natural environment.

Visit the DEFRA website for details of the Rural Strategy

Key Elements of the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act:

• The establishment of Natural England: a single organisation with the responsibility for enhancing biodiversity and landscape – in rural, urban and coastal areas – with promoting access and recreation
• Formal establishment of Commission for Rural Communities to act as an independent advocate, adviser and watchdog for rural people, designed to ensure that the Government’s policies make a real and tangible difference to people in rural areas, especially in tackling social and economic exclusion and disadvantage
• Delivers (Government’s) commitment to curtail the inappropriate use of byways by motor vehicles by putting an end to claims for motor vehicle access on the basis of historical use by horse-drawn vehicles
• Allows the Secretary of State, and designated bodies, to delegate Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) functions to one another by mutual consent, to provide simple and more effective access to customers. These powers are limited so that regulatory and enforcement functions cannot be delegated to private bodies
• The Act contained additional measures to help streamline delivery and simplify the legislative framework:
  Changes to the competence, remit and constitution of the Joint Nature Conservation Committee
• Reconstitution of the Inland Waterways Amenity Advisory Council
• Improving the governance arrangements for the National Parks, to implement the findings of recent reviews
• Small change to Countryside and Rights of Way (CROW) Act 2000 to define the meaning of “statutory undertaker”
• Provisions to address a small number of gaps and uncertainties which have been identified for Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs)
• Provisions to make eight amendments to Part 1 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 to improve wildlife protection
• Extension of the CROW biodiversity duty to public bodies and statutory undertakers to ensure due regard to the conservation of biodiversity
• Provisions to amend the flood defence byelaw-making powers of the Environment Agency, Local Authority and Internal Drainage Board to allow them to take nature conservation into account when determining consent for flood defence works
• Provisions to clarify the use of mechanically propelled vehicles on public rights of way
• Repealing provisions for three DEFRA-sponsored statutory committees which have become defunct: the Hill Farming Advisory Committee and two Committees covering Food and Drink – the Consumer Committee for Great Britain and the Committee for Investigation

When Natural England and the Commission for Rural Communities were established in October 2006, English Nature and the Countryside Agency were wound up.

Return to Legislation