Science-based expertise
Dubbed ‘the biggest change to planning regulations in decades’ by the Conservative government at the time, the law, embedded in the Environment Act, promised to help reverse a ‘devastating decline’ in UK species, which have plummeted 19 per cent in their abundance since the 1970s. It recognised, for the first time, the value of all English wildlife habitats within the planning system.
In practice, a site’s biodiversity value, both before and after development, is measured in ‘biodiversity units’ by an ecologist using a standardised metric. Developers must then guarantee a 10 per cent increase on this value, via a ‘mitigation hierarchy’ of biodiversity delivery options.
‘Clients will often ask for the cheapest option without accounting for the full-on, ongoing maintenance regime’
The most preferred is an on-site uplift – for example by incorporating wildflower meadows, hedgerows, bat boxes, or ponds and wetlands into a scheme’s landscaping – followed by off-site gain, which secures like-for-like biodiversity units from a landowner. As a ‘last resort’, developers can buy biodiversity ‘statutory credits’ from Natural England. Crucially, developers must maintain the uplift for 30 years.
The nation’s BNG drive has been hailed by Oxford University biologist Natalie Duffus as ‘one of the most ambitious schemes’ the world has seen, with other nations watching keenly to see how it unfolds.
The legislation is complex and still evolving but the industry is rapidly wising up to both the benefits and snags of BNG. So how is the law faring?
Like any new legislation, BNG has suffered teething problems in its first 12 months.
As the industry scrambled to respond to the new law, environmental consultants were inundated. Nora von Xylander, biodiversity and sustainability specialist at Tunley Environmental consultancy, says the ‘stressful’ first year has been mired in delays and frustrations as clients raced to adapt or re-submit plans to meet BNG requirements. She says the message from development teams has been: ‘We needed this yesterday’.
But von Xylander says architects are now ‘looking at BNG from the start, rather than tracing it backwards’ – and clients are becoming ‘more and more receptive’ by the month.
Architects might be ahead of the game, but the BNG planning panic has had an industry-wide ripple effect – and not all for the good.
An AJ expert source, who wishes to remain anonymous, says BNG has led to a ‘cowboy market’ as developers flounder for information and opportunists jump into the skills vacuum.
The source cites developers ‘literally bending rules to get through’, local planning authorities ‘taking payments for BNG when [the authority] hasn’t got a way of delivering it’, ecologists writing ‘blatantly false’ biodiversity plans and habitat bank operators offering ‘ridiculous’ off-site solutions ‘purely for commercial gain’.
Amid the ruckus, those organisations with genuine expertise in BNG are highly sought-after.