Marking the ten-year anniversary of the EU Referendum, a new report, Broken promises, deregulation and declining nature: the UK environment ten years after the Brexit vote, outlines the stark nature declines that multiple governments have presided over since 2016.

Dubbed at the time as a ‘Green Brexit’ (1), Governments immediately after the referendum promised to boost nature and environmental protections as a result of leaving the EU. Yet the evidence published today by The Wildlife Trusts shows the opposite result.

As the report outlines, the story of Brexit for the UK’s environment has been one of deregulation and a weakening of environmental laws, to deleterious social and economic effect. Since Brexit, the EU has upgraded or introduced 28 environmental laws that the UK has not mirrored. As a result, many of today’s laws which protect the UK’s environment are now weaker than they were a decade ago.