As a Worcestershire farmer struggles to get his dog field business off the ground, we look at the growing disconnect between planning, environmental regulation and what actually happens on the ground.
I’ve just read the story of David Pugh, a Worcestershire farmer whose plans to establish a secure dog field have reportedly been held up for nine months, despite receiving planning permission in December 2025.
According to Hits Radio, his family has already spent more than £10,000 on planning fees and surveys, and they’re still waiting to move forward.
He’s not a British Dog Fields client, but his experience is depressingly familiar to us.
And, frankly, none of this surprises me.
As a once-upon-a-time ecologist, I understand why environmental protection matters. As somebody who works with farmers and landowners trying to establish viable rural businesses, I also understand the practical consequences of an increasingly complicated and expensive regulatory system.
And some of what we’re seeing has become utterly disproportionate to what’s actually being proposed.
We’ve Created a System That People Have Lost Respect For
We’re talking about farmers paying thousands of pounds for individual ecological reports, many of which involve applying standardised methodologies and management prescriptions. AKA copy-paste.
How many hedge whips should be planted per metre? What species should they be? How often should they be cut?
C’mon now.
Yes, some ecological work requires genuine professional expertise. Some assessments involve complex questions that absolutely need experienced professionals.
But how much of this is delivering meaningful environmental improvement, and how much is simply producing another document to satisfy another requirement?
And then there are the 30-year commitments.
Thirty years of prescribed habitat management, monitoring and potentially substantial financial obligations, in an economy and a landscape that are changing before our eyes.
All this for what might be a relatively modest change of use of an agricultural field.
I’m increasingly unsurprised that people are choosing to ignore the rules altogether.
When a system becomes so expensive, complicated and seemingly disconnected from reality, we shouldn’t be shocked when people start losing respect for it, or quietly stop engaging with it.
There comes a point where compliance starts to feel less like doing the right thing and more like paying an increasingly expensive admission fee to an administrative circus.
And the people paying for it aren’t necessarily the people who can afford to.
We’re Not Exactly Paving Paradise
Something that makes the situation particularly farcical is that in England, you can generally erect a fence up to two metres high under permitted development rights, provided the relevant conditions are met.
There are exceptions, of course but where those rights apply, you can ordinarily fence your agricultural land without asking the council’s permission, and the usual permitted development rules don’t prescribe the colour, style or type of fencing you must use. Subject to other applicable laws, you could install a completely enclosed wildlife-exclusion fence without making any kind of planning application. However, apply to use that same piece of land as a commercial dog field, and suddenly everybody seems to have an opinion about your fence.
What it should look like, what colour it should be, what materials you should use and whether you should leave gaps in it for hedgehogs and other mammals.
And yes, we have even encountered qualified ecologists suggesting access for badgers through secure dog-field fencing on more than one occasion.
In David’s case, the planning permission actually requires all boundary fencing to include mammal gates or gaps.
Sorry, but what?
We’re talking about an enclosure specifically designed to keep dogs in and other animals out. Which is rather the point of a secure dog field.
I’m not suggesting wildlife should be ignored, or that an established wildlife corridor should be blocked without consideration – I’m suggesting that ecological requirements should recognise what the development is actually supposed to do.
We’re not paving paradise. We’re generally retaining substantial areas of grassland, fencing relatively small parcels of agricultural land and, certainly with all our clients, we are creating opportunities for additional habitat improvements around the boundaries irrespective of obligation.
Yet, the moment somebody applies to earn a living from that land, the fence itself can become subject to ecological prescriptions, design specifications, additional reports and professional fees.
Apparently, you’re perfectly capable of deciding how to fence your own land. Until you want to earn a living from it. Then everybody needs a say.
It’s lunacy, really.
Biodiversity by Spreadsheet: When Ticking the Box Becomes the Objective
And then there’s the ecology. My issue isn’t whether biodiversity obligations can be achieved because usually they can. My issue is whether the increasingly prescriptive biodiversity net gain system is actually delivering the best environmental outcomes.
For anyone unfamiliar with biodiversity net gain, or BNG, the process centres around a statutory calculation tool that assigns numerical values to habitats according to things such as their type, condition and distinctiveness. Developers then have to demonstrate the required biodiversity gain, normally 10%. (Part of the issue here is that farmers looking to create a dog field don’t really consider themselves developers – it’s the wrong word)
In practice, an enormous amount of attention becomes focused on achieving that number.
A few metres of hedgerow here, some native trees there backed up by a prescribed management regime. Another calculation. Another report, or 4.
Tick, tick, tick.
I’ve been involved in hundreds of dog-field projects, and I’ve seen how this plays out in the real world. Rather than starting with what would realistically benefit the local environment, people are backed into a corner where the priority becomes satisfying the metric.
And that’s where I think we’ve lost the plot.
A really good ecologist should be able to visit a site, look at the surrounding landscape and identify what would make a meaningful difference there. Perhaps that’s strengthening an existing wildlife corridor. Maybe it’s improving the structure of a neglected hedgerow. It might be creating, enhancing or restoring habitat for species actually present locally or addressing a very specific ecological weakness.
The right answer will be different for every site. And every diversification.
Those interventions don’t always conveniently deliver the credits required by the spreadsheet, or they may be awkward to accommodate within its prescribed categories, so we end up specifying the things that achieve the required number. Not necessarily the things that would deliver the greatest local benefit.
I’ve also lost count of the number of times we’ve seen ecological recommendations include plants or trees that are inappropriate for a facility specifically intended for dogs, including species with toxicity concerns.
That’s not necessarily because somebody is a bad ecologist. Nobody can have encyclopaedic knowledge of every consideration attached to every form of rural business.
But it demonstrates exactly why we need a more joined-up approach between the people designing and operating these businesses, ecologists and planners.
But…. have you tried getting hold of a planning officer lately? Every local planning authority is its own little fleet within a vast national planning Armada, but almost every ship is leaking, the crews are overstretched and the storm keeps getting worse.
We keep blaming the sailors when the real problem is that the whole bloody fleet is barely seaworthy.
Ignoring it all anyway
There’s an irony to all this.
In my experience, plenty of operators do the bare minimum necessary to satisfy their formal ecological obligations – that’s if they implement the prescribed enhancement at all.
That doesn’t mean they’re doing nothing for the environment. Quite the opposite in fact.
Many subsequently make substantial improvements to their land, often going well beyond the original requirements because they actually care about the place, live there, work there and understand it. Yet those improvements may have very little to do with what was prescribed in the original report.
I would estimate that fewer than 10% of the applications I’ve reviewed fully implement every ecological enhancement specified for their projects. That’s my observation from seven years of consultancy work, not a formally audited industry statistic.
But I think we should be asking why.
Why are we creating a system in which people spend thousands of pounds satisfying a calculation but don’t necessarily see sufficient value in the resulting prescriptions to carry them through?
Why are we rewarding the production of reports rather than giving greater weight to practical, locally appropriate improvements?
And why are we tying landowners into decades of obligations when a more flexible, site-specific approach could potentially deliver better outcomes?
I want to see biodiversity improve.
But I would much rather see a genuinely thoughtful ecological enhancement scheme designed around a particular site and its surrounding landscape than another expensive formulaic exercise that exists primarily to satisfy a spreadsheet.
We’ve become so obsessed with demonstrating biodiversity gain on paper that we’ve lost sight of what we’re actually trying to achieve on the ground.
Thirty Years. For a Dog Field.
Under mandatory BNG, significant on-site habitat enhancements and off-site gains can carry a minimum 30-year management obligation.
Thirty years.
Just consider what that means.
Thirty years ago, the agricultural landscape, the economy, the climate and the regulatory environment looked very different and now we’re asking people to make long-term land-management commitments against a backdrop of enormous uncertainty.
What happens when the landscape changes, when the business changes or when government policy changes again, and how much does it cost to have somebody check that you’re still doing what you promised? Some councils publish biodiversity monitoring charges running into tens of thousands of pounds for certain schemes.
What are we actually paying for?
How much money goes into improving habitats on the ground, and how much goes into reports, administration, inspections and monitoring? What evidence do we have that the improvements promised on paper are actually being delivered?
In the seven years I’ve been doing this, including paying monitoring fees on behalf of clients, I have never once personally known a member of a local planning authority ecology team to visit one of those sites to monitor the work on the ground.
Maybe it happens elsewhere.
But after hundreds of projects, you’d think I’d have bumped into one by now.
Environmental outcomes should matter more than the volume of documentation produced along the way.
Already Failed?
Perhaps the clearest indication that the system wasn’t quite as perfect as advertised is that the government has already started changing it.
From 6 August 2026, planning applications for developments on sites of 0.2 hectares or less became exempt from mandatory BNG, subject to the relevant conditions. Certain temporary developments also became exempt.
So we’re already changing the rules.
Fine. Governments change rules. Sometimes they even realise something was overcooked. Miracles apparently remain possible.
But what happens to people who entered the system under the previous regime?
What happens to somebody who has already paid thousands of pounds for ecological reports, entered into long-term commitments and paid for years of monitoring? If equivalent development would now be treated differently, shouldn’t there at least be a conversation about whether existing obligations remain proportionate?
And if somebody has paid in advance for monitoring that is subsequently reduced or no longer required, what happens to the money? Do they get it back or are they simply supposed to accept that the rules have changed but the financial consequences of the old ones haven’t?
There is precedent for governments changing the rules and then looking backwards. Here’s an interesting example.
When New York legalised cannabis, eligible historic convictions were automatically expunged. California created routes for some previous convictions to be dismissed, sealed or reduced, including resentencing for people still serving sentences. Germany also allows certain historic cannabis convictions to be deleted from its central register.
So the idea that everyone caught under an old regime must simply live with the consequences forever is clearly not some immutable principle of government. Where there is enough political will, mechanisms can be created to revisit what came before.
Which rather begs the question: if governments can do that in the context of criminal law and drug policy, surely to God we can manage the rather less revolutionary task of revisiting planning and ecological obligations imposed under rules that are already being watered down.
We’re not talking about undoing criminal convictions or rewriting decades of drugs policy. We’re talking about reports, monitoring fees and 30-year land-management obligations.
If governments as different at those in the US, Canada and Germany can find a mechanism for the former, I’m confident that we can work out how not to leave farmers and small landowners chained to the latter simply because they had the misfortune to apply at the wrong time.
At What Point Does Regulation Become the Problem?
I increasingly feel we’re living in a world where layer upon layer of rules, procedures and administrative obligations are imposed without enough consideration of what they collectively cost, whether they’re practical, or whether they achieve what they’re supposed to.
Individual requirements may each have an explanation. The people administering them may simply be doing their jobs. But who is looking at the cumulative impact? Who is considering what this means for a farmer trying to establish another income stream?
Who is looking at the consequences for small businesses that don’t have unlimited cash reserves or the luxury of waiting months, sometimes years, for somebody to sign off another document?
And how much meaningful say do the people affected actually have?
Legislation, policy and technical guidance go through different processes. But many of the detailed requirements landowners actually experience arise through technical guidance, individual planning conditions and administrative decisions over which they have very little practical influence. The result can feel extraordinarily remote from the people expected to comply with it. And when somebody questions any of it, the answer often seems to be:
The rules are the rules.
Well, that isn’t good enough.
We should be asking whether those rules are proportionate, whether they’re delivering meaningful results and whether the people imposing them understand their practical consequences.
Because at some point, the system itself becomes the problem.
When People Stop Believing in the System
Perhaps this is the bit that concerns me most.
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to reconcile the stated ambition of encouraging rural diversification with the experience of some of the people actually trying to do it.
We encourage farmers to generate alternative income, become more resilient and establish sustainable businesses. Then we put them through a process that can leave them facing substantial costs, long-term obligations and months, if not years, of uncertainty before they’ve earned their first pound. I don’t think we should be surprised when people start pushing back.
Nor do I think resistance will always look like tens of thousands of people marching through London. Sometimes it might look like a farmer deciding he’s had enough. Sometimes it might look like a small business owner just carrying on without waiting for yet another approval.
Sometimes it might simply be somebody deciding that the rules have become so unreasonable that they’re no longer prepared to engage with them.
That doesn’t mean ignoring the law is risk-free. It doesn’t mean every regulation is unnecessary, or that everybody who dislikes a requirement is justified in disregarding it but it does tell us something about the relationship between the people making the rules and the people expected to live with them.
When systems originally intended to protect us begin to feel like handcuffs, people inevitably start questioning whose interests they’re really serving. And when compliance becomes an increasingly expensive exercise in paperwork rather than something people recognise as necessary or worthwhile, the whole system starts to lose credibility.
Perhaps the powers that be should spend less time wondering why people have lost respect for the rules and more time considering whether they’ve made those rules worthy of respect.D
Nobody’s marching on Westminster over hedge whips. But I know plenty of farmers who’ve simply stopped asking. That should worry the people writing the rules far more than it seems to.
Read the original Hits Radio report about Peachley Paws
Peachley Paws is not a British Dog Fields client. This article is an opinion piece informed by publicly reported information, the planning documents for application M/25/01435/CU and our experience working with dog field operators and prospective rural businesses.