Government sets out the way forward on Biodiversity Net Gain

This week, Defra published its long-awaited response to the Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) regulation and implementation consultation of January 2022. This appeared along with guidance on BNG and guidance for land managers. Here Lesley Wilson, IEMA’s policy lead for biodiversity and natural capital, discusses the key elements of the announcements.

The consultation response was due out in November of 2022 and so its publication will be useful news for landowners, land managers, local authorities, and the large number of stakeholders who will be affected by the BNG requirements that come into effect in November of this year.

BNG of a minimum of 10% is a requirement of the Environment Act and the consultation had asked questions around:

• exemptions, statutory designated sites, and irreplaceable habitats
• applying BNG to different types of development, e.g. phased, small sites, NSIPS
• how BNG will work within the Town and Country Planning Act, e.g. biodiversity gain plan, offsite gains, the market for biodiversity units, the biodiversity site register, and additionality.

IEMA responded to the original consultation, which can be found here.

Defra has settled on exemptions to BNG to include a de minimus of 25 meters squared, householder applications, and small-scale self-builds. It’s encouraging to see that although they’ve chosen a higher de minimus, there are plans to work with the DLUHC on planning policy for smaller developments including households to possibly secure on-site BNG enhancements.

It is disappointing that designated sites were not exempted, but there will be reporting required that will distinguish between the BNG requirement and the need to meet other requirements on these sites. Defra seems to have taken on board the need for consistency and nobody was asked to do less than 10% BNG and different transition times are kept to a minimum (different only for small sites and NSIPs).

There is little detail on the resourcing, monitoring, and measuring of net gain that will be essential for successful implementation, with responsibility largely given to planning authorities. However, Defra has stated that they have increased funding for Local Planning Authorities to £16.71 million in the run up to November 2023.

There is secondary legislation to come on irreplaceable habitats and the details of phased developments and we hope that this will be available as soon as possible.

The response came out on the same day as the release of guidance around BNG implementation. This included some basic information on ‘what is biodiversity net gain’, and on selling biodiversity units and nutrient units including stacking and bundling with, for example, carbon credits. There is a useful list of grant schemes that may or may not affect the landowners’ ability to take advantage of biodiversity and nutrient credits.

Much of the detail around the implementation of BNG remains unclear and we are anticipating that the new guidance, currently quite minimum, will be expanded and built on to provide greater clarity of process to stakeholders.

If you missed the first two in our series of BNG webinars on design and implementation they are posted on the IEMA website and we’ll be holding the third on monitoring and measuring on 22^nd March 2023.

At the end of Q2 we will produce a BNG practice and insights paper from these webinars that include BNG FAQs.

At the end of Q3 we will be publishing a practice and policy paper on stacking and bundling, aligning with Defra’s guidance.