An update on the implementation of mandatory BNG for major developments under the Town and Country Planning Act and the latest about the extension of BNG to minor (small sites) developments.
Dr Nick White works across Government (national and local), and with developers, NGOs and academia to advance policy, practice and standards around net gain (biodiversity, natural capital and environmental). The current focus of his work is on biodiversity net gain legislation, the biodiversity metric and biodiversity net gain standards and guidance. He is also working on the evolving approach to marine net gain.
Q&A with Dr Nick White
If you don’t require an ecologist to fill in the Small Sites Metric, is there a chance Priority Habitats on a small site might be missed?
If you have Priority Habitats on your site you shouldn’t be using the Small Sites Metric. There are criteria around when the Small Sites Metric can and cannot be used, so I’d encourage people to look at these. The Small Sites Metric is designed for sites of little or no biodiversity interest.
You mention sites that need planning permission but that are delivering Biodiversity Net Gain units not being exempt from needing to do the 10%. River restoration typically needs planning permission so can you tell us more about those types of projects and how this works?
We’ve been talking to the Rivers Trust about this. There are things like fish passages and weir removal where you typically need planning permission. Things like weir removal typically generate biodiversity units so under normal circumstances they would be exempt if people wanted to use those units. Fish passages do not generate units, and they can have an impact on habitats on the riverbank as well. We’ve been talking to the Rivers Trust about potential design solutions.
The reason they are not all exempt automatically is that there was a concern that if you just exempt any project that claims to be an environmental project from the Biodiversity Net Gain requirements, you’d very quickly get lots of projects claiming to be environmental when they were not.
We are talking to DEFRA about some further guidance on this as we are aware it has generated lots of questions and confusion.
When does the game plan have to be submitted, before or after planning permission?
Biodiversity Net Gain is a post-permission requirement so once you have planning permission you cannot legally commence your development until you’ve then satisfied the mandatory gain condition.
The game plan should be submitted after planning permission has been secured, but you could reasonably expect the Local Planning Authority to regard Biodiversity Net Gain as a material consideration at the planning application stage. They would want the applicant to provide enough information (like a draft game plan) to show the project is capable of meeting this subsequent requirement.
The condition assessment methodology is considered statutory, but is it a methodology or is it a series of criteria? Is there some clarification on how you do it, is it just a need to fill in a spreadsheet or is it more than that?
The spreadsheet sets out the criteria to meet in order to describe a habitat as being at a particular state and condition and then into that instra metric. There may be different tools that you look to help with that. What you couldn’t do is say that you’ve decided yourself that what constitutes good condition for a particular habitat is radically different from what is set out in the condition assessment spreadsheet.
Do you have any idea for timescale for when we might know who the Responsible Bodies are, and when we might see Conservation Convenance being used?
The only Responsible Body listed on the gov website is Natural England. For Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) purposes that’s not very helpful as Natural England has said it’s not going to provide Conservation Convenance for BNG. Eventually the gov website will list all Responsible Bodies but it hasn’t been updated yet with additional organisations that have been approved as Responsible Bodies.
The application process to become a Responsible Body is an ongoing process. People can apply to it at any time.
Further info and links
- Statutory biodiversity metric tools and guides: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/statutory-biodiversity-metric-tools-and-guides
- Defra guidance on BNG: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/biodiversity-net-gain
- Biodiversity net gain planning practice guidance: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/biodiversity-net-gain
- Natural England blogs about BNG: https://naturalengland.blog.gov.uk/category/bng/
- Biodiversity Net Gain: An introduction to the benefits: https://naturalengland.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/183/2022/04/BNG-Brochure_Final_Compressed-002.pdf
- Biodiversity Net Gain for local authorities: https://www.local.gov.uk/pas/environment/biodiversity-net-gain-local-authorities
- Biodiversity Net Gain: Good Practice Principles for Development: https://cieem.net/resource/biodiversity-net-gain-good-practice-principles-for-development/
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