Scotland has ambitious environmental planning policies, with strong commitments to tackling the climate and biodiversity crises. But communities are discovering that good policy means little if they do not have the power, resources or evidence to make it count.

When the National Planning Framework 4 (NPF4) came into force in 2023, it strengthened protection for nature, including ancient woodland, and established a stronger expectation that development should contribute to biodiversity enhancement.

Three years on, are these policies actually working?

Our experience working with communities shows a serious gap between policy and practice. Nature is essential to our health, wellbeing and quality of life. Yet planning decisions still too often treat ecological protection as something that can be traded away when development pressures arise.

Dykebar: when evidence is overlooked

At the former Dykebar Hospital estate in Paisley, preparations for 600 houses have fundamentally altered a landscape that provided space, stillness and connection to nature for people experiencing complex mental health needs. Residents still occupy buildings on the site where over 3000 trees have been felled.

Our particular concern was Hollybush woodland, part of the site where 20 houses are proposed. Developers’ surveys described it as scrub and secondary woodland of relatively limited value.

But the community looked more closely. They found mature trees, an established canopy, woodland plants and around 20 veteran trees. Earlier botanical surveys had recorded ancient woodland indicator species, while historical maps showed long-standing woodland cover.

The evidence was there. It simply had not been properly brought together or acted upon.

Hollybush was not on the Ancient Woodland Inventory, but the Inventory is known to be incomplete. Historical maps and field evidence are essential to identifying ancient woodland  and those maps existed.

The community did that work. The developers did not.

The community submitted their evidence to the planners, evidence that has since been corroborated by Nature Scot. But by then, the developer had appealed the original refusal, a right communities do not have, and the evidence was considered too late to influence the Reporter’s decision.

Permission was granted.

Hundreds of years of accumulated ecology, its complexity, diversity and uniqueness, have been lost for around 20 houses.

The case exposes a fundamental problem: ecological assessments are commissioned by developers rather than independently. Communities are then left trying to identify what has been missed, with far fewer resources and no equivalent right of appeal.

Rosskeen: when poor assessments become biodiversity gain

At the House of Rosskeen near Invergordon, a proposal for 66 houses on the community’s only remaining natural open space raised similar concerns.

Ecological surveys were undertaken out of season, including on a day when the site was covered in ice. The ecological report itself acknowledged that a proper ecological survey had not been undertaken.

The community brought in independent ecologists. They uncovered a remarkable diversity of fungi in a long-established field that had been missed in the developer’s assessment and was considered likely to be of exceptional local or regional value.

But it came too late. The grassland has now been lost, along with the fungal networks and ecological infrastructure it supported.

The problems continued with the biodiversity calculations. The reported Biodiversity Net Gain was just 0.76%, despite the Council identifying 10% as a benchmark where the metric is used. Campaigners identified errors in the calculation, including the treatment of invasive species and trees in private gardens. Their analysis produced approximately 9% net biodiversity loss, rather than a 0.76% gain.

There were also questions about a proposed enhancement involving Scottish primrose (Primula scotica), a rare species endemic to Scotland and generally associated with exposed coastal habitats. The proposed intervention would require a licence, with serious questions about whether it would be granted or whether the species could survive in this setting.

How meaningful is a biodiversity gain if it depends on ecological interventions that are uncertain or unlikely to succeed?

Most strikingly, the claimed biodiversity gain relied heavily on the community taking ownership of the woodland and delivering long-term ecological management, including major rhododendron removal.

We believe communities can often be excellent custodians of nature. They live there. They know the land. They care about its future.

But that commitment must not be exploited.

Community stewardship should be something communities choose and are properly resourced to deliver, not a way for developers to meet biodiversity commitments without paying for the work required.

If a developer claims biodiversity gain, the developer should be responsible for ensuring that gain is real, properly evidenced, funded and capable of being delivered for the long term.

A system that needs to change

These are two examples of a much bigger problem: nature is losing out to development.

The problem is not simply individual decisions. The system itself is failing nature. Communities have limited ability to challenge poor ecological assessments, question biodiversity claims or ensure their concerns meaningfully influence decisions.

Some of these problems are fixable.

Local authorities need access to independent ecological expertise, with assessments commissioned early enough for proper seasonal surveys and meaningful community input. Planning authorities also need the training and resources to make informed ecological decisions, particularly when only four in ten planning departments have in-house ecological expertise.

The National Planning Hub should help build that ecological capacity, not simply support faster decision-making.

And we need to rebalance power.

Developers have the resources to bring forward proposals and ecological evidence. Communities are too often left trying to prove why that evidence is wrong, with limited resources and no equivalent right of appeal.

If communities are expected to live with the consequences of development, they must have a meaningful say in whether and how that development happens.

Nature cannot continue to depend on exhausted volunteers filling the gaps left by the planning system.

If Scotland is serious about the environmental ambitions of NPF4, nature needs more than strong policies on paper. It needs a planning system with the expertise, scrutiny and community power to make those policies count.