UK progress on legally binding environmental targets is “largely off track”, with the Office for Environmental Protection warning that current policies will not deliver the Environment Act 2021 goals on air, water and biodiversity. The watchdog cites slow delivery of river basin management plans, weak nutrient pollution controls and delays to local nature recovery strategies as key gaps. For infrastructure schemes, this signals tighter scrutiny of water quality impacts, biodiversity net gain delivery and construction emissions as regulators push departments and agencies to close compliance gaps.

A £40M plan to regenerate Northfleet Harbourside with a new Ebbsfleet United FC stadium and thousands of riverside homes is facing strong objections over lead contamination and freight disruption on the Thames. Objectors warn that disturbing historic industrial fill could mobilise legacy lead in soils and sediments, while new residential blocks and matchday traffic could constrain wharf access and rail-connected aggregates and cement terminals. Planners will need robust ground investigation, remediation strategies and safeguarded freight corridors to avoid compromising both public health and critical construction materials supply.

Deep-sea mining tests in the Clarion–Clipperton Zone at 4,280 metres depth, commissioned by Nauru Ocean Resources (a The Metals Company subsidiary), cut macrofaunal density by 37% and species richness by 32% along machine tracks over two years, based on disturbance of 3,000 tonnes of polymetallic nodules. European researchers from the Natural History Museum, University of Gothenburg and the National Oceanography Centre collected 4,350 sediment macrofaunal animals and identified 788 species, mainly polychaete worms, crustaceans and molluscs. The trial used machines only about half the size of planned commercial systems, raising concern that full-scale operations could cause larger, possibly irreversible, benthic impacts.