To all users of the HRA Handbook and Journal.
We have reluctantly, but realistically, made the inevitable decision that the updatable HRA Handbook and the HRA Journal is no longer a practical or viable offer from DTA Publications. Access to the Handbook will be terminated during the week beginning 5th January 2026, no further updating emails or Journals will be issued. In this email we explain this decision and provide action points which you must take to ensure that you do not continue to follow the guidance in the Handbook. It will become increasingly out-of-date after this time, or the coming into force of Part 3 of the Planning and Infrastructure Act if sooner.
Last December we wrote to all Handbook subscribers explaining what we proposed to do with the Handbook and Journal during 2025 owing to the uncertainty about changes and the then recent and anticipated legislation. We suspended updating the Handbook in response to relevant changes. The life of all subscriptions in place on 31st December 2024 was extended free of charge until 31st December 2025. Existing subscribers on 31st December 2024 continued to have normal access to the on-line content of the Handbook and Journals during 2025, but the facility to take out a new subscription was suspended on 31st December 2024. The production of new hard copy materials was also suspended.
Over the past twelve months, as promised, we have used emails to report and comment on the Planning Reform Working Paper, the Planning and Infrastructure Bill and other significant events in the HRA field. We alerted users to the significant implications of the CG Fry case in the Supreme Court and posted warning flags about their effects on the Handbook text online.
Finally, we undertook to commence a review of future service provision in light of current circumstances on 1st December 2025. We have completed this.
Despite widespread criticism and considerable debate about its flaws, we expect that the Planning and Infrastructure Bill will be coming into force in the next couple of months. The concessions and amendments the Government has had to make will do little to ameliorate the potential threats to our nationally and internationally important sites targeted by the Bill. It will provide for major changes to the ways in which developers will be able to comply with nature conservation legislation, whilst evading the need to carry out assessments including HRA in respect of impacts covered by an Environmental Delivery Plan produced by Natural England and made by the Secretary of State.
The Nuclear Regulatory Review from the taskforce led by John Fingleton was published recently. We were deeply disappointed how the report reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of ecology, environmental processes, nature conservation law and practice, and their context, purpose and importance.
The review report is very negative about regulation, especially environmental regulation. Recommendation 12 (page 71) would enable the nuclear industry to bypass assessment duties and ignore any effects of change in the natural environment brought about by its developments and instead pay money into a pot in the hope that it will make nature recovery better.
The prime minister has accepted its recommendations and is going further by encouraging them to be rolled out in other sectors.
The direction of travel is clear. The Government is determined to create as many ways as it considers necessary of evading or adapting the HRA process for different developments. It looks as though the regulatory and assessment landscape will become ever more complex with many individual sectors each having their own way of avoiding or adapting the HRA process, whilst the Regulations themselves are retained, with or without amendments, for other sectors who have no bespoke solutions. It is not a viable proposition for us to adapt and maintain the Handbook into the huge and probably unmanageable resource that would be needed to adequately navigate you through all the relevant processes in England. Sadly, we have had to conclude that to maintain the Handbook for Wales alone, which may escape some of the legislative turbulence, would not be feasible unless subscriptions were elevated to unrealistic levels.
As indicated above, access to the Handbook will be terminated during the week beginning 5th January 2026, no further updating emails or Journals will be issued.
An explanation of the current situation will be displayed on the web site until 30th June 2026, the web site will then be closed.
Hard copies
Once access to the online Handbook is terminated, users of hard copies of the Handbook are particularly at risk of misapplying the regulatory procedures as they unfold in the future. We strongly recommend that you either:
- Recycle the paper pages and dispose of the binder in general waste or by splitting the metal elements from the cardboard, depending on your local recycling facilities; or
- If you need to retain the hard copy for historical reasons, you download and print off a hard copy of the warning notice available on the downloads tab in the user area until 5th January and firmly adhere it to the front cover of your Handbook. Thank you.
We would like to take this opportunity to pass on our sincere thanks to our loyal base of users of and contributors to the Handbook and Journal. It has been a privilege and a pleasure to be of service. We hope that the Handbook and Journal have been a valued asset over the last 12 years.
With very best wishes
David and Caroline