Rebuilding Britain from the grassroots - the role of environmental action in delivering national renewal from our neighbourhoods up

National Policy Forum Submission 2025 from Labour’s Environment Campaign - SERA (Socialist Environmental Resources Association) 

Introduction

Labour’s Environment Campaign - SERA welcomes the opportunity to contribute to Labour’s National Policy Forum consultation. As the party’s environmental affiliate, SERA has championed climate and environmental leadership within Labour for over 50 years. 

We strongly support Labour’s mission to make Britain a clean energy superpower. Delivering on this mission requires a broad environmental strategy that prioritises environmental justice, ensures lasting community benefit, and avoids replicating the inequities embedded in the current system.

Labour needs to focus on a joined-up approach to environmental action, delivering change at a neighbourhood level through improving local places like parks and rivers and enabling communities to benefit from local renewables. This needs to connect with the national and regional actions taken by the Labour Government to address the climate and nature crisis, as well as inequality.

For example, investment in green infrastructure and measures like Biodiversity Net Gain and the Nature Recovery Fund need to support the creation of green spaces in our most deprived neighbourhoods, making them accessible within a maximum 15-minute walk from home.

Make Energy Efficiency the Foundation of Clean Growth

Improving energy efficiency—particularly in the housing sector—remains a crucial step for any serious clean energy plan. Energy efficiency not only cuts emissions but also lowers household bills, reduces pressure on the grid, and improves health outcomes. The Warm Homes Plan must be accelerated and expanded. 

However, energy efficiency doesn’t have to mean changed lifestyles or reduced demand. In fact, electrification of heating and industry is vital and should be accelerated where this can be met by clean energy supply. Increased industrial demand will reduce unit costs to households and should be encouraged to ensure scale and scalability.

Embed Environmental Oversight in Policy-Making

To ensure that environmental and community interests are upheld consistently, we propose a formal requirement to consult the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) as part of the policy development process. This would embed long-term environmental thinking into national decision-making and help safeguard both people and planet.

SERA’s work on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill has highlighted the need for statutory climate and nature tests in infrastructure planning, along with democratic guarantees for public engagement. The OEP should play a defined role in overseeing the implementation of these developments.

Back Community Energy and Reform Energy Pricing

Community energy schemes are vital for local empowerment, resilience, and fairness. Yet they face regulatory and financial barriers to selling energy locally. Support mechanisms should be expanded to enable viable local energy markets.

This needs to be combined with offering neighbourhoods direct financial benefits from the creation of renewable energy infrastructure in their local areas through creation of local neighbourhood funds to channel investment into improving social infrastructure.

We also urge caution around zonal pricing, which risks entrenching regional inequality by making clean energy more expensive in some areas than others.

The broader energy pricing system must be reformed. Currently, the cost of renewable electricity is tied to the wholesale price of gas, despite having far lower production costs. This distorts the market, penalises consumers, and slows progress. Energy pricing should reflect actual generation costs so that households can see the benefits of the transition in reduced bills. This should be coupled with wide-reaching public awareness campaigns so that the link between clean energy and reduced bills is well understood.

Deliver Good Green Jobs and a Fairer Economy

A successful environmental transition must be built on well-paid, secure jobs and a fairer economy. Clean energy investment, nature restoration, housing, and infrastructure should all drive employment opportunities in every region.

That includes proper funding and planning to help workers currently in carbon-intensive sectors transition into new roles in the green economy. The mistakes of the past—such as the closure of coal without adequate alternatives—must not be repeated.

This is also an opportunity for the future. Young people need clear pathways into good green jobs through apprenticeships and skills development, especially in energy efficiency, construction, and infrastructure.

We must invest in the workforce we need, here in Britain. This means ensuring that domestic skills development is a priority so that the transition creates jobs for British workers, not dependency on imported labour or overseas supply chains.

Invest Responsibly: Avoiding Future Liabilities

The energy transition must be managed with long-term financial prudence. The UK’s experience with Private Finance Initiatives (PFI) shows the risks of offloading costs to future generations. Similar caution should be applied to current investment models.

There is widespread scepticism about nuclear energy among our members. The lifetime cost per MWh, including waste management and decommissioning, is high; the environmental, safety and national security risks are significant; and the historical record on clean-up is poor. Renewable technologies offer lower costs, faster deployment, and greater community benefit. When finances are restricted, better value choices must be made. This makes investing in renewables over nuclear preferable.

Fair Returns for Affected Communities

As clean energy infrastructure expands, especially electricity grid upgrades, affected communities deserve more than tokenistic compensation. A one-off payment of £250 for visual intrusion benefits few, often wealthier, individuals.

Instead, Labour should develop a community benefit model, creating local neighbourhood funds that support shared local assets, such as parks, public spaces, or community-owned projects.

Advance Sustainable Transport and Transition Fuels

Greater public incentives are needed to make electric vehicles (EVs) affordable and practical. This must include both upfront support and infrastructure investment.

The use of biomass for energy must be evaluated critically. Biomass reduces agricultural capacity, contributing to food insecurity. The experience of Drax has shown time and again that overseas supply chains for biomass fuel are open to corruption, leading to the destruction of woodlands that we need to preserve. Any reliance on biomass should be time-limited, sustainability-assured, and not allowed to delay the scaling of truly clean alternatives.

Address Land Use Trade-offs with Integrated Policy

Food security and energy security must not be set against each other. The tension between solar installations and agricultural use reflects a false binary. With the right planning frameworks and incentives, multifunctional land use is achievable and necessary.

SERA supports the forthcoming Land Use Framework to guide these decisions. However, the urgent requirement to halt nature’s decline and accelerate nature recovery, means the Framework needs to have real teeth, which requires clear land use change targets driven by an empowered Land Use Taskforce. These need to be backed by appropriate changes to Environmental Land Management Schemes to enable farmers to make the transition to regenerative agriculture and to support joint action at a landscape level. We also need an Office for Carbon and Nature Investment to help unlock the necessary private investment in nature restoration. 

We need a planning system that integrates nature recovery, housing need, food production, and clean energy in the public interest. Given the decline of nature under successive Conservative Governments, Labour must put nature first, demonstrating how the 30x30 target and protecting and enhancing our most important nature-rich spaces across the country is a core focus of this Government.

An effective planning system will target housing and infrastructure where it is most needed and where the environmental impacts are avoided where possible and mitigated where necessary. It will also ensure, through policy initiatives like BNG, that green spaces are enhanced.

Introduce a Strong Fossil Fuel Levy

Fossil fuel companies continue to profit from environmental degradation. A significantly increased fossil fuel levy should be introduced, reflecting the true cost of emissions and ecosystem damage. Revenues must be ringfenced to fund energy efficiency, clean energy access, and nature restoration—especially in communities currently excluded from those benefits.

Protecting and expanding local access to greenspace - our Natural Health Service

Nature-rich green spaces are proven to improve physical and mental health, enhance community wellbeing, and build climate resilience. Yet access to high-quality green space remains deeply unequal. ICON  (Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods) has also highlighted the crucial role of investment in ‘social infrastructure’ like parks in turning around our most deprived neighbourhoods. 

Too often, nature restoration or protection has focused on areas already rich in environmental assets, while poorer communities lose access to local green space through development. A just environmental strategy must reverse this trend—protecting and enhancing nature where people live.

As Labour works to shift the NHS towards a more preventative model, we must look outside of hospitals and GP surgeries to understand the positive impact that access to green space can bring to communities. This can save money and improve mental and physical health. 

Planning policy and wider investment must ensure that no community is left behind when it comes to access to green space and its many benefits.

The role of environmental security in making Britain more resilient to external threats

Environmental degradation, like climate change and resource depletion, is impacting human security, stability, and well-being in the UK and globally. The Green Finance Institute has highlighted the levels of environmental risk to our GDP from nature’s decline, particularly in vulnerable areas like farming. It estimates the economic impacts could be as great as 12% of our GDP.

Labour has an opportunity to accelerate the use of environmental action to enhance our security and economic resilience, protecting us from external threats and bad actors. It can also demonstrate how Labour’s joined up approach to energy, food and environmental security will deliver a stronger nation working in tandem with focus on defence. 

A national programme of investment in green infrastructure and nature-based solutions can help protect our country from the impacts of climate change and go hand in hand with our commitment to Net Zero. 

Conclusion

SERA urges Labour to lead not just on clean energy targets, but on fairness, access to nature, and environmental justice. We must design an energy and environmental system that works for everyone. That means affordable bills, fair investment, inclusive policymaking, and a built-in commitment to community benefit.

The green transition is our best chance in a generation to reshape society for the better. Through acting with vision and purpose, we can ensure the benefits are shared by all.