Following a fantastic campaign – which the Airports Commission said generated more representations than any other – the Thames estuary airport pie-in-the-sky proposal promoted by the Mayor of London was categorically ruled out on the 2nd of September.

Unfortunately, two days later, Medway Council’s own planning committee attacked the Hoo peninsula with its own threat – a very serious threat – to build approximately 5,000 houses at Lodge hill, a bird sanctuary in my constituency.

Two days after we had had the dreadful threat of the Thames estuary airport ruled out, we had this other one to deal with. Five days later, Medway Council had to refer the application to the Secretary of State to consider whether it should be called in.

The rules are clear – minister must call in the plans

The criteria used for planning application call-ins used to be called the ‘Caborn criteria’. Three of those criteria appear to be met very clearly by this application to the extent that a call-in is required.

The first relates to conflicting with national policies on important matters, notably the protection of sites of special scientific interest – and, indeed, the whole integrity of our system of environmental protection.

The second relates to having significant effects beyond the immediate locality. It could even have an effect as far away as west Africa, where the nightingales that are the cause of this area becoming an SSSI spend the British winter.

There could be an impact on Essex, because the planning committee of Medway council has, in its wisdom, accepted a proposal that the nightingales can be told to go to an alternative location somewhere in Essex.

We do not have much in the way of detail, but this clearly suggests significant effects beyond the immediate locality. Perhaps most importantly, approving the proposal or failing to call it in and seeking to nod it through with a green light could have impacts on other SSSIs across the country.

The third criterion is where the development would give rise to substantial cross-border or national controversy. Having been at the centre of such controversy during the recent Rochester and Strood by-election, I can vouch for that.

Medway Council assured – ‘there will be no call-in’

On 25 September, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government recused himself from considering the application on the basis that he is a member of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

Two days later, I recused myself from the Conservative party and was determined to fight a by-election partly on this issue. Since the Secretary of State recused himself, the matter has been considered by the Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis).

He wrote to me on 15 October, and I was glad to hear that no ministerial decision had been taken on whether the matter should be called in. He criticised what he described as my claim that such a decision had been taken.

Of course, that was not my claim. It was a claim made by the deputy leader of Medway council, Councillor Alan Jarrett, in a meeting of Conservative councillors. His statement was that it had apparently been communicated to him by the Government that the proposal would be green-lighted and would not be called in.

That led to another councillor present at the meeting, Councillor Peter Rodberg, leaving the Conservative group and joining me in UKIP.

‘Just keep quiet until after the election’

He says – and this is borne out by another councillor who has spoken to me, and who remains a Conservative – that at the end of the meeting, after the councillors had been told that the Government would green-light the proposal, Councillor Peter Hicks, who represents Strood Rural, said that they should keep quiet about it until after the election.

It was a pleasure to learn from the Minister that he was dealing with the issue of the call-in properly. He clearly recognises that he is acting in a quasi-judicial capacity, and – at least in terms of the time that he has already devoted to the issue and the correspondence that he has issued – he appears to be performing his duties with diligence.

His most recent letter was written on 8 December to Councillor Rodney Chambers, the leader of Medway Council. I understand that since this Government have been in office no more than a dozen applications have been called in each year, whereas under the last Government about 30 a year were called in, but I am not aware of any precedent for such a letter.

A most irregular correspondence

The Minister wrote asking for Medway Council’s views, and in particular the views of the planning committee that had considered the application on 4 September, on a number of representations that had been received, including representations from the RSPB and Natural England.

Unfortunately the Minister did not attach the representations that he said he had attached to the letter, and, as far as I know, they have not been published. The letter is peculiar, however. It is not clear whether Medway Council’s views were being sought, or the views of the planning committee, or both, and it is not clear how any conflict between them should be resolved.

The planning committee meeting was, of course, on the record, so the extent to which it has considered – or, one suspects, not considered – the matters that it should have considered should have been made clear either in its decision notice or in the record of that meeting.

I therefore question the credibility and reliability of any ex post facto justifications that Medway Council may now produce for its decision, and any statement in which it purports to have abided by the national planning policy framework.

Only one reasonable conclusion to this sorry affair

Given that letter, given that at least three of the criteria for call-in were clearly met, and given the statement by the deputy leader of the Council that the proposal would be green-lighted in the light of communications that he at least believed were taking place within the Government or among those who he thought could speak for them in respect of there not being a call-in, I think it is clear that the safest and, indeed, the only appropriate option is for the Government to call in the application, appoint an inspector, and give proper consideration to what is, in my view, an incredibly damaging application.

This application would result in the pulling together of several villages into a single conglomeration, and would cause a Site of Special Scientific Interest to be almost completely built over, which would undermine the whole system of environmental protection in this country.

It should now be considered by an inspector and then by the Secretary of State, and, hopefully, turned down as a result.

Mark Reckless is the UKIP MP for Rochester and Strood.

This article is an extract from a speech by Mark Reckless MP to the House of Commons on 18th December 2014, also reproduced on his own website.

It is revered for the beauty of its song and is a beloved adornment to the British countryside. But the nightingale – hailed by Keats as a “light-winged Dryad of the trees” – is now in trouble, having suffered a catastrophic drop in numbers in recent years.

Even worse, say ornithologists, the best site in Britain for protecting the songbird – at Lodge Hill in Medway, Kent – is under threat of destruction.

Its loss, they say, could deal an irreparable blow to the nightingale in this country. It could also open the floodgates to commercial exploitation of hundreds of other protected environmental sites across the country.

“Lodge Hill is the only Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in the UK that is specifically set up to protect nightingales”, said Sarah Lee, of the RSPB.

“It is the most important site for the birds in the UK. Yet the local council want to build 5,000 homes there. It would absolutely destroy the site and the birds’ homes – and send a very worrying signal about the prospects of protecting other critically important sites in the UK.”

According to ornithologists, the nightingale has suffered a 90% reduction in numbers over the past 40 years. Factors involved in this population crash include the intensification of UK farming that has destroyed swaths of sandy scrubland on which nightingales like to breed.

The spread of human populations in West Africa, where the nightingale spends the winter, has also affected numbers. In 2012, a survey revealed there were only 3,300 breeding pairs left in the UK. The bird is now on the amber list of species of ‘conservation concern’.

Nightingale SSSI targetted for building

In an attempt to protect the nightingale, the Lodge Hill site – a piece of land once owned by the Ministry of Defence – was named as an SSSI, a place where local species are given special protection against human interference.

However, three years ago, Medway Council prepared plans to build 5,000 homes at Lodge Hill, a proposal that was approved by its planning committee in September.

The Council, like others around the country, is under intense pressure from the government to build new housing but has only limited amounts of available land. Lodge Hill is the only large site it possesses, the council claims. Hence the planning committee’s decision to allow the building of houses there – even though the land is an SSSI.

“We are eager for this scheme, which is on government-owned land, to progress and deliver the houses and jobs we badly need”, said leader of the Conservative-controlled council Rodney Chambers in 2013, when the proposal was first discussed at council level.

By contrast, wildlife groups and heritage organisations are enraged. “This decision is deeply flawed”, says John Bennett of the Kent Wildlife Trust, which claims that Medway Council has failed to demonstrate that the benefits of house building outweighs the destruction of a key SSSI at Lodge Hill.

Plans contravene national policies – but ministers sit on hands

At the same time, the RSPB claims the Council’s proposals contravene government planning policy. Natural England argues that alternative building schemes could deliver a similar number of houses in Medway without touching Lodge Hill.

The National Trust has also dismissed a Medway Council plan to provide an alternative wildlife site to compensate for the loss of Lodge Hill as “unrealistic”.

These groups want the Medway Council plan to be called in by the secretary of state for communities and local government, Eric Pickles, who would then have to hold a public inquiry.

But Pickles – a keen ornithologist – has said he will stand aside from making that decision and has left it instead to Brandon Lewis, the minister of state for housing.

Lewis has yet to act, however, and groups such as the National Trust and RSPB are getting nervous. They fear the Lodge Hill plan will be allowed to proceed – with disturbing implications for the UK environment.

If this development goes ahead, nowhere is safe

“If Medway’s plan for Lodge Hill is allowed to go ahead, the implication for every SSSI in Britain is that the government is not going to step in if any of them are threatened”, said Sarah Lee. “The government would be saying to developers that SSSIs are now fair game.”

In addition to Lodge Hill, 71,000 hectares of MoD land are designated as SSSIs along with 157,000 hectares of Crown Estate land. The Highways Agency, local authorities, Natural England, the Environment Agency and Forest Enterprise also possess significant amounts of SSSIs.

All this property – which gives protection to rare plant life, birds, amphibians, and special geological features in Britain – would be vulnerable to being built over if Lodge Hill is allowed to be developed, it is argued.

This point was stressed by Karin Taylor, head of planning for the National Trust, in a letter to the government. Giving go-ahead for the housing project, she wrote,

“would threaten the wider environment and wildlife networks in which we have a deep interest in terms of protecting the nation’s special places for ever, for everyone.”

Or as Lee said to the Observer last week: “Giving Lodge Hill the go-ahead would be a disaster. It would open the floodgates for uncontrolled development in rare, precious places across the country.”

Robin McKie is science editor at the Guardian.

This article was originally published in the Guardian. It is reprocuced here by kind permission via the Guardian Environment Network.

The world’s investors – both big and small – think primarily in terms of making good returns on their money. And, over the years, investing in the fossil fuel industry has been considered a safe bet.

Yet maybe, just maybe, attitudes are changing – and fairly profoundly – as financial analysts warn that the industry faces a ‘perfect storm’ in 2015.

The Carbon Tracker Initiative (CTI), a London-based financial thinktank, analyses the energy industry and lobbies to limit emissions of climate-changing greenhouse gases.

On one side, CTI says, the industry is being buffeted by a crash in oil prices and a drop in demand. On the other, there’s the threat of increasing regulation aimed at cutting GHG emissions and a worldwide growth in renewable forms of energy.

Cool reception

Anthony Hobley, CTI’s chief executive, says investors are realising that the energy world is changing.

“At one stage, when we talked to investment firms about the risks of investing in fossil fuels we were given a cool reception”, Hobley told Climate News Network.

“Now we are being invited to brief the big investment funds. Investors have an enormous amount of power – they are weighing up the risks of investing in fossil fuels and wondering just how safe their money is.”

The CTI has long warned of the dangers of a ‘carbon bubble’, with investments in fossil fuels becoming ‘stranded assets’ due to the imposition of stricter regulatory controls on emissions and the widespread adoption of renewable energy.

“The carbon bubble is not going to burst in 2015”, Hobley says. “The transition from fossil fuels to other forms of energy is going to take place over several decades.

“But a combination of more regulations, new technologies, the falling price of renewable energy, and the need for a more efficient use of resources, is making investors rethink their investment strategies.”

Energy companies are also reconsidering their plans. EON, Germany’s largest power utility, announced earlier this month that it would be reorganising its structure in order to focus on the development of renewables.

Concern in boardrooms

A worldwide campaign calling for divestment in fossil fuels is another factor causing some concern in the boardrooms of the big fossil fuel companies.

The industry is powerful and, despite the problems it’s facing, it is unlikely to collapse anytime soon. But it has been severely damaged by recent events.

Goldman Sachs, the global investment bank, says a trillion dollars of investments in various oil and gas projects around the world are at risk – or stranded – due to the fall in oil prices.

A rapid rise in production from US shale deposits in recent years has caused a glut on the global oil market.

Analysts say a significant slowdown in the rate of economic growth in China is also a major factor behind the present fall-off in oil prices, and in the big declines in coal prices on the world market.

Kieran Cooke writes for Climate News Network.