Eco Chamber

Successive governments have tried to undermine the Habitat Regulations as red tape that needs to be cut. 

Most recently, critics have pointed to attacks on the regulations made under the previous Starmer administration, including the  Planning and Infrastructure Act and legislation set to be brought forward following the Fingleton Review. 

Those who want to water down the legislation point to data on falling species abundance, arguing the regulations aren’t working anyway. 

But in a new report published by The Wildlife Trusts, Matt Browne, head of public affairs, joins podcast host James Agyepong-Parsons to discuss why the charity is arguing for  the regulations to be kept safe and what needs to happen next to do that.  

ENDS Report senior journalist Shosha Adie also discusses the Conservative Party’s latest attacks on net zero and their attempts to repeal the Climate Change Act 2008. 

PLUS

• Dame Angela Eagle’s pushback against Reform UK’s climate denial.
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• The Kidlington “super waste dump” in Oxfordshire that has been cleared.
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• And the Government’s new air pollution alert system.  

The ECO Chamber is brought to you by the journalists of ENDS Report.

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On 20 July, Andy Burnham became prime minister alongside his newly appointed secretaries of state, including Dame Angela Eagle who took the reins at DEFRA. 

In the days that followed, new DEFRA ministers were announced, but it’s taken until now for their briefs to be confirmed.

In this week’s episode, ENDS Report editor Jamie Carpenter explains what the department’s minister will need to contend with as they get across their portfolios. 

The team also speaks with Sam Riggs, an environmental barrister at 25 Bedford Row, about the government’s latest crackdown on waste crime, fly-tipping and the boosted powers for the Environment Agency. 

Riggs believes the new fiscal powers granted to the EA will have little impact on the ground. Speaking with podcast host James Agyepong-Parsons, Riggs explains what needs to be done if DEFRA actually wants to ‘crackdown’ on waste crime. 

PLUS

• The montagu’s harrier chicks hatched in a secret location of England.
• Campaigners take the government to court over Special Administration Regime arrangements with water companies
• And the new ‘call in’ planning powers mooted for mayors

The ECO Chamber is brought to you by the journalists of ENDS Report.

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When Labour entered government it pushed for a “reset” within the water sector promising tougher enforcement and major reforms. 

The idea of a “powerful” single water regulator for England was mooted, that would replace Ofwat, parts of the Environment Agency and Natural England, and the Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI). 

The head of the DWI, Marcus Rink, this month sat down with ENDS Report’s senior reporter, Shosha Adie to discuss why the so-called super regulator may not be all that super. 

Plus, this week ECO Chamber host James Agyepong-Parsons also discusses the potential environmental consequences of the government’s new National Planning Policy Framework with special guest Pamela Chesterman, an environmental lawyer at Irwin Mitchel LLP. 

Chesterman is optimistic about the new national planning blueprint but has concerns that in the short-term current local plans could now be considered “outdated” with a flood of planning applications likely.

PLUS

• Hinkley Point C is now open to environmental information requests.
• Billions more have been raised on customers’ water bills.
• The Office for Environmental Protection’s new agenda under an environment of “real-term cuts”.

The ECO Chamber is brought to you by the journalists of ENDS Report.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over the past few weeks, environmentalists have been celebrating the release of six young sea eagles into Exmoor National Park. 

Their release means more than 50 have now taken flight across England since their reintroduction on the Isle of Wight in 2019. 

However, a recent investigation by the wildlife watchdog Natural England has found that some sea eagles, found dead, had ingested enough rat poison for it to have contributed towards their demise. 

Dorset has been a particular hotspot for the poisoned birds. 

On this week’s episode, podcast host James Agyepong-Parsons asks, why?

With special guest Bob Elliot, the CEO of the legal campaign outfit Wild Justice, the pair discuss the importance of raptor reintroductions and the reality of what it takes to launch a successful wildlife crime investigation.  

Alongside sea eagles, ospreys in England are also making a comeback. 

The RSPB Campfield Marsh reserve in Cumbria has become the latest home to a pair of breeding ospreys, marking an end to their century-long absence from the bird charity’s reserves.

Elliot explains why the return of large birds of prey is so crucial for England’s natural environment to recover. 

The team also looks at recently released data giving an update on England’s ailing water bodies. 

PLUS

• The Clacton by-election

• The UK’s ‘largest ever’ pollution legal claim…

• And the airport runway, running away in the courts…

The ECO Chamber is brought to you by the journalists of ENDS Report.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Environment Agency has declared droughts across half of England, as parts of the country are experiencing the longest dry period in 30 years.

At the same time, wildfires have raged across the UK. Most recently, this has included the Dunwich Heath wildfire in the Suffolk Coast and Heaths protected area, which saw more than 150 hectares of rare coastal lowland heath burned.  

On this week’s episode, the National Trust’s senior national specialist on climate adaptation, Keith Jones, tells the Eco Chamber what’s been lost, and what needs to happen next. 

Jones explains how the National Trust is taking action now, but as a nation, he doesn’t believe the UK has the capacity to respond to a catastrophic wildfire event such as those seen in Europe this summer. 

The podcast team also gets to grips with the recently assigned portfolios of DEFRA’s new ministers.

PLUS

• The deaths of England’s sea eagles tied to rat poison 
• The bat nightmare of Lochmaben 
• And the river Ouse’s new charter

The ECO Chamber is brought to you by the journalists of ENDS Report.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Since taking office as prime minister, Andy Burnham has made a swathe of ministerial changes across Westminster, including within DEFRA. 

Dame Angela Eagle has succeeded Emma Reynolds as the new environment secretary and new faces have entered the department’s fold.

They include Suffolk Coastal MP Jenny Riddell-Carpenter, who has joined DEFRA as a junior minister and water industry veteran Lee Pitcher, the Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme MP.  

Pitcher is one of more than 50 new parliamentary private secretaries appointed across government.

But one name absent from DEFRA’s ranks is Mary Creagh, the MP for Coventry East and the first nature minister who served under both environment secretaries Emma Reynolds and Steve Reed.  

Across her career, Creagh has acted as both shadow secretary for DEFRA and later as chair for the Environmental Audit Committee. 

On this week’s episode, the team discusses what her absence could mean for the department and asks why Natural England is worried about the implications of a recent High Court ruling on gamebirds. 

PLUS

• The Environment Agency’s campaign to clamp down on waste crime
• The Sea Use Framework sunk by the government.
• And the former Southern Water chief executive charged with ‘conspiracy to defraud’

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After weeks of political machinations, Sir Keir Starmer is out and Andy Burnham is in at No.10 Downing Street. While details have remained elusive on the former Manchester mayor’s environmental policies, as he picks his cabinet we can start to understand what type of government he intends to run.

Dame Angela Eagle, the new DEFRA secretary, is not new to the department, having served as farming minister from September 2025 to June this year. But how green is she beyond that? Ed Miliband has been moved from his post as energy secretary to head up the Foreign Office, leaving Burnham “policy guru” Miatta Fahnbulleh heading up the government’s net zero policy. Where might that leave the controversial decision sitting on the DESNZ desk over oil and gas extraction in the North Sea?

On this week’s ECO Chamber, podcast host Tess Colley and ENDS Report’s senior reporter Shosha Adie, come together to get to grips with these questions.

PLUS:

• Why nature campaigners in Dartmoor have said the government has ‘caved into conspiracy theories’ over pony grazing controls
• Who is Natural England’s new chief executive?
• And news that Thames Water creditors are battling to prevent nationalisation as Burnham arrives in No.10

The ECO Chamber is brought to you by journalists at ENDS Report.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Newly-elected Labour MP for Makerfield Andy Burnham is expected to be confirmed as the UK’s next prime minister in the coming days, having secured enough backing from Labour MPs to make it mathematically impossible for a rival to run against him for the leadership of the Labour Party.

The former mayor of Manchester is expected to reshuffle his cabinet once he has the keys to Number 10, which would trigger sweeping changes in personnel in Westminster – both on the frontbenches and on the backbenches. There’s much interest in particular in the fate of current energy secretary Ed Miliband, who is tipped as a potential chancellor in Burnham’s administration.

But what actually happens inside a Whitehall department when a new secretary of state is appointed after a reshuffle? What are the very first decisions that land on a new minister's desk? And how quickly do new special advisers (SpAds) embed themselves into Whitehall?

To find out, ECO Chamber host Tess Colley and ENDS Report editor Jamie Carpenter are joined by special guest Isabella Gornall, the founder of the communications agency Seahorse Environmental and former environmental advisor to Zac Goldsmith.

PLUS 

• Why a long-awaited delivery plan to restore nature by 2030 has been met with scorn by environmental charities. 
• The inquiry set to be held into the death of boy who lived near a flooded historic landfill
• And news of the UK chemical factory at the centre of a PFAS scandal which has announced plans to ‘cease production’. 

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Last month, a Nature’s Rights Bill entered the House of Lords.

Its aim is to make nature a legal subject, seeing nature’s rights “represented and enforced in legal and administrative processes”. 

But Conservative peer Lord Frost said that taking the bill seriously would require every individual and organisation “to pay obeisance to nature and its rights, as if it were some kind of goddess”, which he called a “pagan vision”.

Although the private members’ bill, proposed by Green Party peer Baroness Bennett, is unlikely to make it into law, it sparked debate in its second reading last week. 

Although the government does not support the bill in and of itself, it has said it was ‘open in principle’ to the idea of supporting new environmental rights in line with the EU.

On this week’s podcast, ECO Chamber host James Agyepong-Parsons and ENDS Report’s senior reporter Shosha Adie find out what that means. 

The duo also discuss how more than 18,000 homes have reportedly been “unlocked” across some of the most-water stressed areas of East Anglia, Lincolnshire and the Home Counties.

PLUS

• The biodiversity net gain market’s move to maturity.

• The budgets squeezed in Starmer’s defence plan.

• And the scientific breakthrough improving carbon sequestration. 

The ECO Chamber is brought to you by the journalists of ENDS Report.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Four years ago, Burnham was interviewed on a Green Alliance podcast wherein he lauded Ed Miliband, now-energy secretary, as a “visionary”, gave his emphatic support for net zero amid the war in Ukraine, rejected fracking outright, and praised onshore wind. 

But that was 2022. 

Today’s political mood-music seems a far-cry from that time, with Reform UK surging ahead in this year’s local elections on an anti-net zero platform. 

What’s more, Labour Unions Unite and GMB have accused Burnham’s rumoured choice of chancellor, Miliband, of prioritising environmental goals over protecting oil and gas jobs in the North Sea. 

In his latest speech given in Manchester, Burnham promised “the biggest rebalancing of power in our country,” advocating for regional devolution, local reindustrialization and regeneration.

On this week’s podcast, ECO Chamber host James Agyepong-Parsons and ENDS Report’s senior reporter Shosha Adie speak with RSK Wilding’s legal counsel Alexa Culva about what it could mean for environmental policy. 

The team also looks at what Burnham’s in-tray on environmental policy looks like should he become the next prime minister.  

PLUS

• Government plans to align with EU deforestation rules gain traction. 
• Post-Brexit deregulation is weakening environmental protections, an environmental charity report warns. 
• And the new taskforce focusing on climate and nature threats to national security. 

The ECO Chamber is brought to you by journalists at ENDS Report.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.