The environment watchdog is being urged to intervene in “cash to trash” planning rules that will allow almost 16,000 new homes in the Norfolk Broads despite the damage to one of the UK’s most environmentally protected areas.

Labour’s flagship planning reforms allow damage to protected habitats and species to be overlooked if developers pay into a central nature restoration fund, which is used for conservation actions at a later date. These environmental delivery plans (EDPs) have been called “cash to trash” by critics, who say they roll back decades of environmental law and are a “licence to kill nature”.

The Norfolk Broads, a heavily protected biodiversity hotspot that is home to more than a quarter of the UK’s rarest plants and animals, is the guinea pig for the first EDP. Developers will pay £2,675 per house – £42m in total – and in return get permission to build 15,780 new homes in the Broads.