Planning reform and animal welfare harms

Over the last five years, the RSPCA has received more than 7,092 reported incidents of suspected wildlife crime. While over half (54%) of these were reports of intentional harm, including beating, mutilation, and attempted killing of wildlife, almost a quarter of reports involved habitat damage or interference. Habitat damage and fragmentation poses significant threats to the welfare of wild animals, specifically by preventing safe movement across a landscape (loss of ecological connectivity), restricting normal behaviours such as foraging or mating, or denying animals’ access to basic needs such as food, water, and shelter, with subsequent impacts including stress, injury, pain, and death.

The RSPCA also receives reports of welfare harms due to building work. Unplanned, poorly mitigated, or unmonitored development can negatively impact the welfare of wild animals, who can be killed or harmed during construction work, or when building work is finished due to loss of shelter, food and nesting sites, or more roads and increased traffic volume.

Over the last five years, the RSPCA has received 149 reports of wildlife crime due to building work.

• The majority of these (70%) involved the disturbance or destruction of birds or their nests.

• Almost a fifth of reports involved harm to badger setts, including instances of setts being dug up or destroyed, building rubble being dumped on a sett, and bleach poured down a sett prior to being built over.

In 2024, five instances of damage to badger setts and fox dens by builders were reported to the RSPCA, including a litter of fox cubs being trapped in their den. Nine reports involved damage to birds’ nests by builders, including nests and young birds blocked in roofs, and nests of birds pulled from scaffolding, with young birds being left to die.

These incidents may have violated multiple wildlife protection laws, including the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017, Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, Protection of Badgers Act 1992, Animal Welfare Act 2006, and Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022. Yet planning reforms are set to dismantle protection under several of these laws through various measures, including allowing developers to pay into a fund to bypass licensing and habitat protection measures, and reduce site-level assessments and safeguards.

The 2025 Wildlife Law Reform report by Anglia Ruskin University recommended that wildlife harms are prioritised in planning: the avoidance of harms, not compensation, must be the priority for wild animals affected by development. Earlier this year, the Animal Sentience Committee also emphasised the need for all relevant planning and infrastructure policies to pay due regard to ways development could adversely affect the welfare of all sentient animals - directly and indirectly, and regardless of conservation status - in line with the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022.

To meet its housing targets without jeopardising nature and animal welfare, the Government must build a planning system which protects wild animals, and prevents wildlife harms at every stage of the development process. By ensuring wild animals can thrive, people will benefit from a healthy environment that supports their own health, economy, and wellbeing.

Kate Allberry, Scientific and Policy Manager at the RSPCA

Photo credits Emma Jacobs/RSPCA

The opinions expressed in this blog are the authors' and not necessarily those of the wider Link membership.