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A former Green Party candidate who now chairs the quango in charge of England’s countryside stands accused of blocking cheaper energy for British households.

Tony Juniper, chairman of Natural England – an arm of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – has been slammed by campaigners who say his organisation is blocking the power stations Britain needs to cut bills.

Natural England is meant to look after the country’s land, rivers and wildlife. Looking for Growth (LfG) says the unelected body now holds a veto over industrial projects, housebuilding and the energy bills your family pays.

Mr Juniper’s long career in the green lobby is well known to his critics. In the late 1980s he worked on parrot conservation.

He later joined Friends of the Earth and led campaigns against a bypass before co-writing a Green New Deal Group report that called for punishingly high taxes on British oil and gas firms.

In 2010 he stood for the Green Party and finished fourth with 7.6 per cent of the vote.

Writing in the Daily Express, Tom Willerton-Gartside of LfG said: “From bat tunnels and cancelled kite festivals to thousands of blocked homes due to snails, the list of things Natural England has said no to seems never-ending.”

He added: “Perhaps the most egregious example is the £700 million fish disco at Hinkley Point C.”This saga has dragged out the construction of Britain’s first new nuclear power station this century for around a decade – still now we do not know whether it will be enough to get Natural England’s approval.

“Earlier this year, reports suggested the 2030 switch-on date will be delayed again because the quango has now decided the fish disco is not, on its own, sufficient.”

The “fish disco” is a set of underwater speakers due to be placed at the development to scare away salmon and eels from the water intake pipes of the station.

Mr Juniper himself stood on a 2010 election platform to “phase out nuclear power and resolutely oppose any new nuclear power station”.

Critics say the timing could hardly be worse for households with analysis from the think tank Onward suggesting that the construction of more nuclear power could bring down household energy bills by around £500 a year.

A Natural England spokesperson said: “Natural England is not a blocker, and to suggest otherwise misunderstands our role entirely. We raise no objections to 99% of the planning applications we’re consulted on, and final decisions on major infrastructure always rest with elected ministers.

“Bringing Natural England in early means identifying and addressing challenges before a project starts, rather than dealing with them one by one as it develops, which speeds up delivery rather than slowing it down. We are fully committed to helping this government build the homes and infrastructure Britain needs, while protecting the nature we all depend on.”