The UK has set a new environmental test for offshore wind growth. Under the Conservation of Habitats and Species (Offshore Wind) (Amendment etc.) Regulations 2026, made on 8 May 2026 and coming into force on 21 May 2026, ministers must secure compensatory action when certain offshore wind plans or projects proceed despite a negative assessment of effects on protected marine sites. The change matters because it puts a clearer legal frame around one of the toughest planning questions in the energy transition: how to expand offshore wind quickly without treating marine nature as an acceptable loss. The draft regulations were approved by both Houses of Parliament, as required by the Energy Act 2023, after formal consultation.

According to the Explanatory Note on legislation.gov.uk, the regulations are made under section 293 of the Energy Act 2023 and cover "relevant offshore wind plans or projects" where the Secretary of State is the appropriate authority. In broad terms, that includes activity in UK offshore waters, the English inshore region and some projects in Welsh and Northern Ireland inshore waters. The legal shift is technical but important. Existing duties in the 2017 inshore and offshore habitats regulations are switched off for this specific compensation function and replaced with a new duty to secure "appropriate compensatory measures". Those measures must benefit the UK marine protected area network in a way that is reasonably proportionate to the adverse effects, or predicted adverse effects, on a European site, European offshore marine site or Ramsar site.

In plain English, the new rules say compensation should not be improvised at the end of the consenting process. New regulation 68ZA in the inshore rules and new regulation 36A in the offshore rules require measures to be chosen through a published compensation hierarchy. The normal expectation is that action should first target the features of the site that are, or may be, harmed by the project. That still leaves room for a broader recovery approach. The regulations allow "wider compensatory measures" where a different option would produce a greater ecological benefit for the UK MPA network. In those cases, approval is needed from the relevant ministerial authority, which is meant to stop wider measures becoming a loose substitute for site-specific repair.

The instrument also reaches beyond individual project consents. It amends the rules for national policy statements, marine policy statements and marine plans where these include relevant offshore wind activity. If the negative assessment comes from the offshore wind element of those plans, the older compensation route no longer applies and the new test for appropriate compensatory measures takes over. For developers, that should reduce some of the uncertainty around what happens when a project with unavoidable environmental effects is still allowed to proceed under the existing assessment framework. For conservation bodies, the key issue is different: whether future guidance turns phrases such as "reasonably proportionate" into a robust ecological standard rather than a negotiating line.

The governance is shared across the UK. The Secretary of State must publish guidance on how compensatory decisions should be made and must also publish the compensation hierarchy for the cases covered by these regulations. Before revising that guidance or hierarchy, the Secretary of State must consult the Welsh Ministers, the Scottish Ministers and Northern Ireland's Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs. There is flexibility inside that structure. Welsh Ministers can publish their own guidance and hierarchy in some inshore cases, while Scottish Ministers can do so under the offshore regime. That matters because marine habitats and species do not follow administrative borders, and a more joined-up compensation system could help move decisions away from isolated project fixes and towards network-level recovery.

The Explanatory Note is careful on one point that should not be missed. These amendments do not sweep away site protections across the board. They disapply certain existing duties only for the function of securing compensation for relevant offshore wind plans or projects, then replace them with a bespoke test focused on the UK MPA network. That creates both an opportunity and a risk. If compensatory measures are selected early, funded properly and monitored against real ecological outcomes, the policy could support faster renewable energy deployment while improving habitat condition elsewhere in the marine protected area network. If the guidance is vague or the measures are weak, the policy could store up years of dispute between project promoters, regulators and coastal communities.

Accountability is built into the instrument. The Secretary of State must review the regulations and the related guidance over time, with the first report due before 30 April 2031 and later reports no more than five years apart. Similar review duties apply to guidance and compensation hierarchies published by the Scottish Ministers and, where relevant, the Welsh Ministers. Signed by Emma Hardy, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, on 8 May 2026, the regulations mark a practical shift in how offshore wind and marine protection will be handled together. The next step is now clear: publish the guidance, show how the hierarchy will work in real cases and prove that compensatory measures can deliver measurable gains for UK seas rather than paper compliance alone.