The Nature Restoration Levy Regulations 2026 were made on 10 September 2026 and came into force on 11 September, the day after they were signed by Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook. The statutory instrument on legislation.gov.uk was approved by both Houses of Parliament under the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, and it sets the detailed rules for how the levy will operate. The instrument extends to England and Wales, but it sits within English planning and environmental protection law. Its job is to turn the levy in the 2025 Act from a policy idea into a working payment system that Natural England can administer where an Environmental Delivery Plan applies.

For readers tracking what this means on the ground, the headline change is that covered development cannot begin until the levy has been paid in full or, where Natural England allows instalments, the first instalment has been paid. The regulations require a planning condition to that effect, and for development authorised by general consent the same restriction is treated as built in where work had not already started before the request to pay was accepted. That matters because it links environmental funding to the real start of construction. Rather than relying on a loose promise that habitat measures will be sorted later, the rules create a firm checkpoint before development moves ahead.

Natural England is given wide responsibility for running the scheme. It can receive requests to pay, accept assumptions of liability, allow liability to be transferred, issue liability notices and, where needed, permit payment by instalments. If nobody assumes liability for a planning-permission scheme, or if the money cannot be recovered from the original liable person, the regulations allow Natural England to place liability on the owners of the land. The calculation rules are also now clear. Charging schedules must take account of the actual and expected cost of conservation measures in the relevant Environmental Delivery Plan, plus management, maintenance, monitoring and related administration. Rates can vary by development size, type, location or environmental effect, and any provisional amount below £50 is written off to nil. The levy is then indexed using the RICS CIL Index, with CPIH used as a fallback if that index is unavailable.

There is some practical flexibility built into the regime. If a development changes in a material way, the liable person must tell Natural England and the levy must be recalculated using the updated scheme details. That should help keep payments closer to the environmental pressure a project is actually expected to create, rather than what was first put on paper. The regulations also allow payments to be transferred between overlapping developments in limited cases where one scheme will not proceed further and another takes its place on the same or partly the same land. If too much has been paid, Natural England must repay an overpayment as soon as practicable in the main cases covered by the rules, and where a repayment is due under that route it must add interest.

The strongest nature safeguard in the instrument is the spending rule. Regulation 33 says levy funds must be spent on conservation measures listed in the relevant Environmental Delivery Plan and tied to the identified environmental feature for which the levy was charged. In plain terms, money collected because a development affects a particular habitat or ecological feature is meant to stay attached to fixing that pressure. The permitted uses are broad enough to make delivery workable. Natural England can fund delivery, management, maintenance and monitoring, and it can cover certain administrative costs linked to the plan and the levy. The rules also allow funds to be reserved for future spending or used beyond the end date of an Environmental Delivery Plan, which reflects the reality that habitat restoration often runs for years, not months. What the money cannot do is drift into unrelated non-conservation measures.

Transparency is built in, at least on paper. Natural England must account separately for levy funds under each Environmental Delivery Plan and report on outstanding sums and spending in midpoint, final and annual reports. If the original conservation measures no longer need funding, the money must still be used for additional conservation measures linked to the same identified environmental feature, and if an Environmental Delivery Plan ends or is revoked the 2025 Act can require remedial action instead. That reporting duty gives communities and campaigners something concrete to watch. The test will not just be how much money is raised, but whether the published reports show it reaching restoration work quickly enough and at a scale that matches the harm being offset.

The enforcement powers are tougher than the title of the regulations might suggest. If nobody assumes liability when they should, Natural England can impose a surcharge of 2 per cent of the levy amount or £300, whichever is higher, unless the levy is below £1,000. For late payment, further surcharges can be added after 30 days, six months and 12 months, each worth 5 per cent of the outstanding amount or £300, again subject to a £1,000 threshold. Interest runs automatically on overdue sums at 2.5 percentage points above the Bank of England base rate. Natural England can also issue warning notices and then stop notices that halt specified activity on site until payment is made, while still allowing works needed for health and safety. On top of that, the levy is recoverable as a debt, and the levy amount becomes a local land charge affecting the land until liability is discharged or otherwise ends.

There are review and appeal routes, which will matter in a system this technical. Liable persons can ask Natural England to review the levy amount, landowners can seek a review of apportioned liability, and both can then appeal to the Secretary of State. Surcharges, interest, warning notices and stop notices can also be challenged, with payment deadlines paused while certain reviews or appeals are still live. For nature recovery, this is a serious piece of plumbing rather than a slogan. The regulations now set out who pays, when payment bites, where the money must go and how Natural England must report back. If Environmental Delivery Plans are well designed and properly scrutinised, the levy could give habitat restoration a steadier funding stream tied to development pressure. From 11 September 2026, that promise moves from statute into day-to-day planning decisions.