Problems and solutions – how to navigate the Biodiversity Net Gain legislation

With the Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) law now in force, the construction industry must come to terms with a complex new regulatory environment, even as pressure mounts to build more desperately needed homes.

The BNG 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.

TheBusinessDesk.com’s roundtable, chaired by Yorkshire editor Mark Flanagan, featured a panel of industry experts who identified what they saw as some of the biggest challenges associated with the legislation and how to address them.

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

Harry Wright, strategic business development manager at Searchland, outlined how his firm has devised a digital platform which can help developers meet their obligations under the BNG law.

Demonstrating the platform to the panel, he explained: “We’re trying to put as much information that is out there on BNG onto a very readable format.

“The platform covers a lot of different types of data sets, whether that is planning applications in general – you can go into a lot of detail about councils and approval rates.

“On the BNG element effectively what we’re trying to do is map the habitats. You can look at planning policy, where the land sits and what is on the land, what is distinctive, and what might not be replaceable.

“We’re never going to replace ecologists – it’s impossible and we don’t want to. It’s more about trying to feed as much information as we can to as many people.”

Picking up on the vital role of ecologists, Sian Stanhope, senior development manager at LCR Property, asked whether council planning departments have the capacity to deal with the implications of BNG.

“Are there enough resources in councils to engage in the process?” she asked. “The council we’re dealing with does not have an ecologist. We’re giving them our informed advice, but they can’t give advice back.”

Maria Gill, principal ecologist at Smeeden Foreman, stressed ecologists need to be involved in the BNG compliance process from the earliest stages of the planning process.

“If we’re not involved from the offset we’re not magicians and we cannot make it work for you,” she said. Greenwashing a [development] scheme down the line is not going to work.”

“Every application has a BNG attached to it and I don’t know how the councils are supposed to be coping. There are ecologists who I know who are having to educate the councils on BNG.”

Phil Porter, principal landscape architect at Planit agreed, commenting: “BNG must be intrinsic from day dot. Ecologists need to be involved from the start.

“But I don’t want this to become a box ticking exercise, where the design is forced down a particular route to tick a box with planning.”

Lydia Dutton, director of regional sustainability at CBRE, said: “We do really need to be thinking about habitat and biodiversity at the start of the development process. And how do we make sure that conversation is possible both through the planning teams and through our development teams?

“How do we enable that realisation of value, in terms of supporting developers in understanding what the costs are associated with sourcing their BNG?”

Laura Dixon, director – planning consultancy at Lambert Smith Hampton, said: “We are working to understand BNG values as early as possible – that’s obviously led by the developer or client in terms of how they want to approach the planning process.

“Depending on the local authority, some of these have supplementary planning documents which advise on how this should be dealt with.

“And it’s about liaising with planning authorities which are often under resourced, so it’s an extra report that the ecologist has to look at and advise on.”

Some panel members queried whether BNG is appropriate for every single development site.

Stuart Tym, partner at Knights, said: “Simple soft landscaping such as a nice green open space in the middle of an estate which is mown every 10 days according to a maintenance plan is not very biodiverse.

“Yes we need more biodiversity, but how suitable is it to do this on every site and integrate that with humans?”

He suggested it would be better to have a national plan for biodiversity, which improves swathes of the country instead of individual housing estates.

Louise Robinson, planning manager at Vastint, said her company is accustomed to including useable green spaces in its developments – spaces designed to entice families, or people from nearby offices, restaurants and cafes.

But she warned that more biodiverse areas do not necessarily work as a leisure amenity. She said: “I was listening to a podcast which made reference to the first Miyawaki forest, which has apparently been brought forward in Leeds.

“They said it provides 30 times more biodiversity than a normal woodland. It also grows 10 times quicker than a normal forest.

“All of that is amazing for your BNG calculations. But how useable is that, and how safe do people feel in that sort of area?”

Panel members revisited the topic of buying off-site “habitat bank” provision, in those cases where the necessary biodiversity net gain cannot be delivered on the actual development site.

Gill said forward-thinking developers are already adapting to this system. She said: “We’ve got some who are ahead of the game. Every time they look at a site, they are looking at a field next to it, buying that field and assigning that for BNG.”

Lucy George, associate at Carter Jonas, said there are serious questions to be asked about how landowners can be encouraged to invest in habitat banks.

She said: “This is a long-term, minimum 30-year commitment. You’ve got to establish that habitat, maintain it, pay for its monitoring, and then you’ve potentially got the risk of the habitat not reaching the condition that it should and you could face a penalty for that.

“And there’s an impact on the capital value of the land. Because if you’ve planted your field with a lot of woodland that will have an impact on the underlying value.”

Nigel Billingsley, partner at Bruton Knowles, said: “We’ve got people looking for BNG land who are trying to talk to farmers and it’s not an easy conversation. I think the market is reluctant to jump into this at the moment.

“But I think industry finds a way. You might think house builders are going to have to spend millions and millions on this. But actually, they’ll work out a way of spending much less.

“As has been said, it might be via just buying an adjacent field and doing something with that or buying a big farm and using that for their own habitat banks.”