Reform UK has joined MPs from across the political spectrum in supporting an amendment to provide every new home in England with at least one swift brick to help endangered cavity-nesting birds, after a similar amendment was blocked by Labour in the committee stage.

Richard Tice, a former housing developer and the Reform deputy leader, said his party’s MPs would support a revised amendment tabled by Labour’s Barry Gardiner to incorporate the measure in the government’s increasingly controversial planning bill.

Tice, who is one of five Reform MPs in the Commons, said: “The Conservatives rejected swift bricks in government, and now Labour is backtracking despite supporting them in opposition. Swifts – one of Britain’s most iconic birds – are in steep decline, along with other cavity-nesting species. All they need is a brick with a hole. It’s simple, low-cost, and essential.”

The amendment, which is supported by Labour backbench rebels, the Green party, the Liberal Democrats and some Tory MPs, is to be debated in the Commons again during the report stage of the planning and infrastructure bill.

The £35 hollow bricks would provide homes for declining species including swifts, house martins, sparrows and starlings. The amendment by Gardiner was revised to incorporate the bricks into building regulations, which supporters say is the only reliable way to ensure developers comply with the law and fit the bricks to new dwellings.

Hannah Bourne-Taylor, the environmentalist who persuaded 109,896 voters to sign a government petition to back the measure, said: “Building regulations is the most feasible route for incorporating swift bricks into legislation. The swift and the swift bricks have always united everyone in the country and that’s now represented in parliament – what other measure reaches across the political spectrum and unites people in parliament and across the country?”

If Labour votes down the amendment in the Commons, it could be revived in the House of Lords where the Conservatives have a majority. Bourne-Taylor said: “If the battle moves to the House of Lords, it’s in the Conservatives’ hands. If they are the nature leaders they claim to be, they can ensure swift bricks become law.”

Tice added: “As a former housebuilder, I know how easy it is to include swift bricks in new developments. Without them, our towns risk becoming sterile, devoid of this accessible and vital part of nature. Over half a million people and leading experts support mandating swift bricks – so why won’t the government act? [The housing minister] Matthew Pennycook claims it’s inappropriate to include in building regulations, yet we already mandate air bricks. The government is completely out of touch with public and expert opinion.”

Labour supported the swift brick amendment when it was tabled in Conservative government legislation in 2023, but reversed its position this year. Although some housebuilders are incorporating swift bricks in new builds, a recent University of Sheffield study found that 75% of bird and bat boxes demanded as a condition of planning permission for new housing developments had failed to materialise when they were complete.

A Reform UK spokesperson said: “We support the amendment and should there be a division we plan on voting for it.”

It comes after the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) announced on Monday that the government may have failed to protect critical wild bird populations by neglecting to implement environmental law properly.

When Britain was an EU member, certain parts of the landscape were designated specially protected conservation zones. They include estuaries, coastal areas and peatland, as well as wetland areas where wading birds live and places birds of prey prefer to nest.

But the OEP, which was set up after Brexit to hold the government to account on environmental law, said the government had failed to ensure adequate protections were in place for these areas and as a result wild bird populations were declining.

It has sent information notices to the government laying out the issues and giving it two months to respond.

Helen Venn, the chief regulatory officer for the OEP, said the government appeared not to be meeting its legally binding plans and targets to halt and reverse the decline of species abundance. Recent government data showed that overall, bird species declined in number UK-wide by 2% and in England by 7% in the five years since 2018.

Faring the worst are farmland birds, which have declined in number severely – by about 61% since 1970 and 9% between 2018 and 2023 – and woodland birds, whose numbers have fallen by about 35% over the long term and 10% in the short term.

A Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spokesperson said: “Britain is a proud nation of nature lovers, and we are taking bold action to reverse decades of decline. This includes £13m to improve our protected sites and better strategic approaches to restore native species and habitats. We will continue to work constructively with the OEP as they take forward this investigation.”