London eases environmental constraint from EU to build more housing

Announced at a time when the Conservative government is accused of reducing its ambitions in the fight against the climate crisis, this decision will make it possible to "unblock" the construction of 100.000 housing units by 2030, indicates the executive. The latter has set itself the target of one million new homes built by next year's legislative elections.

For this, he will come back to a "defective" European regulation according to him which requires property developers to compensate for the discharges into the environment of polluting substances emanating from their projects.

"These rules which come from Brussels prevent the creation of new housing in certain regions, depriving the local population of control over what is built and when", justified the government in a press release.

"I want to see more houses built (...) But sometimes the European laws that we inherited are an obstacle. It's not fair", also defended on X (ex-Twitter) Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

If polluting discharges into rivers are "a real problem", "the contribution of new housing (to these discharges) is very low", argues the government.

London announces in parallel to allocate 280 million pounds (more than 326 million euros) to "compensate" the emission of discharges induced by the construction of these new housing units.

And authorities will work with local officials and the building industry to tackle pollution, the government says.

But the decision, which will be put to a vote in Parliament, has been very badly received by environmentalists who have for years denounced water pollution in the country, in particular the discharge of sewage into rivers and the sea by water treatment companies.

"Rather than allowing developers to cut corners, the Sunak government should ensure we have the proper infrastructure to treat our wastewater so we can build new housing without sacrificing the quality of our rivers," he said. Greenpeace's Doug Parr.

For his part, the president of the Home Builders Federation (Home Builders Federation) Stewart Baseley hailed "good news necessary for companies threatened with going out of business" for lack of projects.