Pollution row halts 11,000 new-build homes

Thousands of homes are stuck in the planning system across west Wales nearly six months after new advice was issued on tackling pollution at sea.

Environment watchdog Natural Resources Wales (NRW) wants building projects to prove they will not add to water quality problems in marine Special Areas of Conservation (SAC).

Housing associations said it had led to a block on building "urgently needed" affordable homes, while one architectural firm forced to make redundancies warned of "massive damage" to the local economy.

NRW said water quality challenges are placing considerable pressure on vital ecosystems and it needed to act decisively to protect them.

The Welsh government said it had prioritised the issue and was urgently exploring all solutions.

"We've had in the region of 14 projects caught up in this - with over 500 units [homes] affected," said Nick Cox who runs an architectural practice in Pembrokeshire working predominately on affordable housing.

He felt the NRW advice had come "out of the blue", leading to a freeze on decisions over planning applications as local authorities in west Wales grappled with how to respond.

"For us it meant a drastic drop in our workload... and we unfortunately had to make two of our staff redundant as a direct consequence," he said.

The business would lose out on "upwards of half a million pounds" in fees over the coming 12 to 18 months, which was "pretty devastating", he said.

"But we're the thin end of the wedge in all this - you're talking about potentially in the region of £100m to £150m of investment and jobs that isn't going to come now or in the foreseeable future to west Wales," he said.

As many as 11,000 new homes are currently unable to progress in the west Wales area, BBC News has been told.

Community Housing Cymru (CHC), the membership body for Welsh housing associations, said this included more than 2,110 affordable properties, with around 800 of those at an advanced stage in the planning process.

"They're homes that we would have expected to see people living in in the next year or so but at the moment we can't move forward," said Rhea Stevens of CHC.

Across Wales tens of thousands of people were on a waiting list for social housing, she said.

"So we have a housing emergency and essentially what we have now is a situation where in certain parts of Wales we cannot build the affordable homes that are so urgently needed".

The group is calling for a workaround that would allow affordable homes to progress through the planning system while longer term solutions to the issues affecting marine special areas of conservation are found.

NRW published new assessments of the condition of environmentally sensitive areas along the Welsh coast back in June.

They found that several sites were suffering from excessive levels of nutrients in the water, affecting rare species and habitats.

They included the Milford Haven Inner Waterbody in Pembrokeshire and another protected estuary - the Burry Inlet between Carmarthenshire and Swansea.

Environmental campaigners said the findings showed how pollution from rivers in Wales was now harming the marine environment and "suffocating our seas".

NRW's reports suggested the nutrient pollution came predominately from agriculture as well as private sewage systems such as septic tanks and the water industry.

The result was that any new developments in the affected areas would have to show they would not add to the nutrient issues, or that they could somehow offset their impact, in order to secure planning permission.

This affected most of Pembrokeshire, parts of Carmarthenshire and Swansea as well as an area of Neath Port Talbot and Anglesey, said Sara Morris, chair of the Planning Officers Society Wales.

She said planning authorities "absolutely understand the importance of water quality and making sure our most important places are protected".

But in a letter to the Welsh government she criticised the handling of NRW's announcement, which happened "without appropriate pre-engagement... and essential supporting information".

"The absence of guidance, source apportionment work, and initially even basic mapping for affected authorities is unacceptable," she wrote.

She told the BBC: "There are some routes through this... but we're probably looking at one to two years to get a nutrient trading scheme up and running that allows applications for large schemes to flow through more quickly."

A nutrient trading scheme would see developers pay a fee to offset pollution from new homes by investing in the creation of wetlands, woodlands or other measures that would help improve water quality.

Wildlife charity WWF Cymru said the situation showed the need for a "well-funded action plan" on river pollution in Wales.

"We haven't really seen sufficient leadership from Welsh government," said Gareth Clubb, WWF Cymru's director.

The government said it had established a taskforce with local authorities, NRW and Welsh Water which was "working at pace" to find quick solutions that would also contribute to more sustainable medium and long-term solutions.

"We are also providing additional support to affected areas, including more than £500,000 to the West Wales Nutrient Management Board and funding of up to £1.5m over three years to support local authorities to tackle nutrient issues," it said.

Mary Lewis from NRW said the organisation had a "responsibility" to provide evidence on the condition of protected sites.

Marine special areas of conservation were "fundamental" for maintaining a diversity of wildlife and habitats, and provided "a whole range of benefits" to society too - from flood defence to opportunities for outdoor recreation, she said.

NRW's latest assessments had highlighted that some sites in particular were in poor condition which caused impacts such as "oxygen level depletion and high growth of algae, blocking out sunlight".

Ms Lewis said: "We moved very quickly to produce mapping and further guidance and are working at pace with those affected planning authorities to apply the assessment processes to understand what needs to be done to be able to look at those housing developments."

It wasn't possible yet to put a timescale on when housing projects would be able to progress, she said - adding it was "always going to be on a case by case basis".

"I think... some short term measures to reduce nitrogen inputs in other parts of the catchment... could be found to allow some of those developments to come forward."

"Medium to long term we need to establish bigger schemes across wider areas of the catchment that will over the long term remove nutrients permanently [before] arriving into our rivers and seas."