Too much too soon? Unravelling the implications of Biodiversity Net Gain

In February the new Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) law came into force, meant to ensure the construction industry plays its part in improving the UK’s natural environment.

The legislation means any site used for development has to be 10% more biodiverse when completed compared to when it started and has to remain so for 30 years. The law is complex and the planning industry’s response to it remains in a state of flux.

TheBusinessDesk.com’s roundtable, chaired by Yorkshire editor Mark Flanagan, saw a panel of industry experts get to grips with how this legislation is impacting the planning and construction sector.

The event was sponsored by software firm Searchland, which has devised a platform to automate the process of sourcing off-market development sites, and hosted by legal and professional services business Knights.

Phil Porter, principal landscape architect at Planit, said while the intentions of the law were positive, its implementation leaves a lot to be desired.

“The concept is great but I think the execution is failing at the moment,” he said. “Since February we’ve had numerous projects involving this (BNG) with mixed results – some have been plain sailing, others have been incredibly hard.”

Stuart Tym, partner at Knights, had an even more emphatic verdict. “No, it’s not working at all. It’s noble intentions badly carried out at the moment,” he said.

But he cautioned that it is difficult to come to a definitive conclusion, because there are “probably as few as 10 or 20 planning permissions” around the country which properly involve BNG.

He also said: “I’m surprised on a daily basis by how many people still haven’t heard of this legislation, despite it now being a compulsory regime.”

Maria Gill, principal ecologist at Smeeden Foreman, agreed it is very early to assess BNG and its full implications.

“We’re still learning even now, things keep cropping up,” she said. “The more schemes you work on, the more apparent it becomes as to what is not working.

“You feel like you need to do a roadshow to educate everyone and say this is what you’re dealing with and these are the red flags to avoid.

“It’s so much to comprehend. If we’re still finding out new things as we go along, how on earth is everyone else supposed to cope?”

Sian Stanhope, senior development manager at LCR Property, said the BNG law is throwing up problems and complexities in cases where adding a biodiverse area to a particular site initially seems like a straightforward process.

She said: “We’ve drawn up schemes where we think ‘this works, we’ve got a lovely bit of public open space which sits well within the scheme,’ but when you put it through the metric you need off-site contributions too and that’s not feasible because of the cost of these contributions, where are you going to put them, will it be on our land, will it be elsewhere?

“So I think the legislation is something that needs more work done to it. It’s not easy and it’s quite painful at times.”

Laura Dixon, director – planning consultancy at Lambert Smith Hampton, pointed to a lack of national consistency in how the legislation is being applied.

“It is inconsistent across the country because each local authority has a different approach,” she said.

“We advise developers on their planning applications and each week we’re getting questions as to how do you think BNG is going to impact this scheme.

“It is very difficult for us to advise because without having baseline assessments and an understanding of the site and the proposals it is difficult.

“You might think the site looks like it is going to have a high BNG value but actually when an assessment is undertaken that might conflict with your initial opinion.”

Picking up on the issue of inconsistency, Louise Robinson, planning manager at Vastint, pointed out that Wales and Scotland are different to England in how they approach biodiversity and development sites.

“Scotland are yet to find a clear way forward as to how they are going to roll out BNG requirements,” she said.

“Wales has gone for an approach that doesn’t quantify the gain. It just stipulates that it needs to be a betterment on what was there.”

Lucy George, associate at Carter Jonas, addressed the matter of developers who cannot improve biodiversity on the sites they are building on, so must instead identify off-site “habitat bank” provision to deliver the necessary biodiversity net gain.

This potentially involves third party landowners and/or purchase of biodiversity credits.

George said: “The marketplace particularly for off-site units still feels very much in its infancy. At the moment, there seems to be a North-South divide in terms of the habitant banks that have readily available biodiversity units for sale.

“I think the most recent quote was that there only 13 habitat banks so far on the national register.”

Lydia Dutton, director of regional sustainability at CBRE, said that landowners who the Government expects to provide habitat banks for off-site biodiversity still need convincing that it is worthwhile for them to allocate land for this purpose.

“Where we’ve got the conversations with the habitat banks and the landowners, if they don’t start to see the value and potential soon they’re going to start putting their land into other opportunities such as nature recovery strategies in the voluntary market,” she warned.

“There could come a time where there isn’t necessarily those BNG options and habitat banks for the development programme within the UK.”

Nigel Billingsley, partner at Bruton Knowles, said now the BNG law has come into force, developers responsible for big, long-term infrastructure projects are having to hastily adjust to the new regime.

He said: “Our clients are struggling to find out how this impacts their schemes. They are often quite engineering or renewable led and suddenly BNG appears and it’s just another box to be ticked – but it’s more complicated than that.

“And it’s about the cost of BNG. Most of these infrastructure schemes are publicly funded one way or another and they are quite big areas of land.

“A lot of them are backed up by compulsory purchase powers. There’s a query at the moment as to whether you can use CPO powers for BNG.”