For this Positive Impact Panel session we explore Biodiversity Net Gain and it’s implementation. Here, to ‘set the scene’ we identify the key motivations behind BNG, the Biodiversity Metric, and the proposed delivery mechanisms. Next, we walk through a few of the key challenges: the impact on both local planning authorities and developers, potential bottlenecks, as well as the development of Biodiversity Offset Markets. Before concluding, we run through potential innovation pathways whether they be through biodiversity offset market development, tools and technologies aiding ecologists, as well as the compatibility with other policy initiatives.
Perfect so good afternoon everybody and thank you for joining our positive impact panel session about biodiversity net gain I’m Isabel sh and I’m Innovation lead for geovision so what is giovis geovision is the Innovation Hub for or and survey and it’s the heart of an Eco system focusing on using location
Data to deliver sustainable Innovation with support startup and innovators in the white sense of the term and so far we have supported over 160 startups in different ways we run several accelerator streams for early stage startups including one focusing on Geotech startups with on survey one in collaboration with hm
Registry focusing on poex as well as a stream with registers of Scotland on Geotech and Pro Tech based in Scotland as a sign note the the call for the accelator is open so if you know startup uh that is early stage and meets the criteria feel free to share the call
With them and we also deliver a series of events including panel sessions like today more technical events as well and last year we’ve launched the geospatial Innovation Awards and they’re an award celebrating how geospatial Innovation can positively shape the world now before we dive into the
Subject at hand today I will go through a little bit of housekeeping so first we’re on a large team call so please make sure that unless you’re one of the panelists you you’re on mute you turn your camera off and most of all you avoid sharing your
Screen as you know and you’ve seen the the popup the call is recorded and it will be shared in our YouTube channel and it will be disseminated amongst our community now feel free to use the chat to introduce yourselves your organizations where you’re from even
Where you are at at the moment and if you have any questions for the panelist or any question at all feel free to put it on the chat and we’ll try to answer the questions and the last thing is I have a special request for you we always very
Keen to improve the panel sessions we do we want to make sure that what we do is useful we want to make sure that the subjects we’re we’re kind of talking about are relevant so please make sure you take some time just a few minutes to
Fill in the survey that could be put in the chat um during the the panel session today now housekeeping finished so now on the very topical subject of biod diversity Net game so as a general rule we will try and avoid using acronyms but for Simplicity today we will say and we
Will use BNG for biodiversity net gain otherwise it’s going to take forever and to set the scene I will start with a number 60% and bear that in mind 60% because according to Dr peris from the Natural History Museum since 1970 the UK has experienced 60% of decrease in
Biodiversity so think about it 50 years and 60% in decrease biodiversity and that’s with that in mind that biodiversity net gain BNG going in less than three weeks we hope to reverse that 50 years of degradation so the BNG has been introduced in the environment Act of
2021 as a mandatory requirement for all new developments in England and it is based on the idea that any development should not just avoid harming biodiversity but contributes to its restoration and enhancement so to secure planning permission developers will have to to submit a biod diversity gain plan bgp
Assessing the habitat value of the land they will be developing and providing a measurable plan of how they will create a net uplift in biodiversity of at least 10% and over a minimum period of 30 years so 30 years is a very long time and the biodiversity value is measured through the biodiversity
Metric now there are three Avenues by which biodiversity value can be incorporated into a development proper disel the first is the favorite one the most preferable and is by doing creating on-site environmental benefits to enhance the habitat value directly the second less favorable is registering an offsite net
Gain that has been allocated and approved as part of the development project and the last option is obtaining a statutory biodiversity credit from the Secretary of State obviously that’s the least favorite option now I will finish that scene setting here because we’re very lucky today to have brilliant
Panelists from all sides of the process so I will ask our panelists to briefly introduce themselves starting with Helen thank you Isabelle um good afternoon everybody my name is Helen newu I’m group head of biodiversity at um Barrett developments Barrett developments is one of the UK’s largest
House builders and my role at Barrett is really to help our 29 divisions understand uh the legislation around biodiversity net gain and how they can meet uh the challenges associated with that thanks Helen G do you want to go next yeah really good to meet you everyone on the call my name’s Gareth
Bru I’m a planning consultant uh and I work for an organization called the planning advisory service if you’ve not heard of us another acronym is a bell P planning advisory service um we’re part of the local government family we’re part of the local government Association small team based centrally but what we
Do is work with local authorities across the country to help support and improve their planning service so I suppose we we give that local Authority perspective on things like biodiversity Net game in we’ve got a number of projects on the way uh under way at the moment but a big
One is obviously around b& and as part of that we work with over 300 local authorities on on net gain so I think it’s some of that experience that I’ll want to share today thank you Gareth fantastic to have you uh Rafi we know you really well because you obviously Vera your startup
Has been part of the exer but please introduce yourself yes very happy to be here we were part of the the 2023 cohort uh so I’m I’m Rafi Cohen uh one of the co- CEOs of verer uh we build software to help local planning authorities to implement biodiversity Net game uh our
Primary software product Melia uh is already being used by lpas across the country to help them with every aspect um of of implementation and ensuring biodiversity n gain is done uh properly local planning authorities is absolutely key to the whole process so we’re really pleased to be working very closely with
Uh a large number of them thank you rafy and last but not least at all Joe hello everyone I’m Joe Heath I’m the head of environment and biodiversity at the land trust so we’re a Land Management charity um covers all of England about 2,800 hectares of land and
Our role with biodiversity net gain is to offer the on-site offsite solutions to developers such as Barrett um also commercial retail developers so our role is very much with the Land Management side of it delivery of BNG over and above 30 Years thank you very much Jo so we’re
Really lucky to have all of you here and thank you again for taking the time to join us this afternoon so I will start with a few questions and I will start with you Gareth if this is okay for you so from your experience with working with local authorities what are the
Motivations for BNG and what are some of the expected benefits the b& regulation yeah well I think it’s really important you you mentioned of a killer fact earlier on didn’t you in terms of the loss of habitat and nature across the country and I think that is a lot of what’s
Driving it so I mean we understand the the UK as a whole you know at the bottom of the G7 Nation list for biodiversity we we’re in the bottom 10% globally so it is a really big national issue and I think it’s fair to say that
Over the last 70 years that time period you mentioned a lot of our nature conservation effort has been very much focus on preserving small pockets of nature designated sites protected sites or protected species and this approach clearly isn’t working that well because we can see
That type of loss so the the real effort behind net gain is a real paradigm shift to try and move to actually promoting and protecting the whole network of nature encouraging nature across you know Network the natural networks that it operates in but also improving it as
Well and the government’s ambition is to leave the environment in a measurably better place than what we um kind of started with for future generations and I think for local authorities the key thing is that that that nature isn’t just a nice thing to look at or enjoy it’s really critical I
Mean some of the other crisis that we’re facing so things like the climate change crisis Nature has a really big role to play in helping us to find solutions to that you know things like flood mitigate gate Urban cooling all those type of things are really important for helping us to
Deal with with with climate crisis you know we know we’ve also got big Health PR problems in the country and certainly in a lot of our local areas so you know we know that nature and the natural environment is so important to good health and importantly placem as well
And that’s where a lot of planners get excited about uh biodiversity net gain because you know local planning authorities are all about creating successful places and successful places for people to live and obviously the natural environment plays a big role in in that as well and I think one of the
Ambitions is is by introducing mandatory net gain to new development we can start to address the real problem which is that kind of conflict between new housing new building and the natural environment so we know we’ve got a housing crisis we know people need new homes we know we’re not meeting our
House building targets and a lot of that is driven by local people’s concern about the loss of the environment and what net gain is around actually showing that new development can actually bring new and improved local environments so I think I’ll leave it there I could talk
Longer thank you Gareth and it’s great to remind us and to kind of put in perspective the fact that it’s not just about uh the environment in terms of um the the life and the the nature but it’s really about also the kind of secondary effects that it has throughout the
Climate crisis and um on humans as well so um in the very brief introduction I’ve I’ve done I have mentioned the biodiversity metric as a key element for the BNG I think rafy it would be great if you could us tell us a bit more about the metric the complexities around it
And how it is to implement it sure um so the the metric is absolutely Central to all of BNG uh and it quantifies BNG at all stages of the process so it might be worth me just elaborating on that a little bit so in terms of the BNG process uh it works
With a planning system so it starts with a planning application and a baselining of what uh level of biodiversity there is on a on a site at at the start of the process and then over the 30-year requirement for manag M for for for management and monitoring of the the
Ground uh biodiversity needs to be Quantified over that time as well so biodiversity metric is a quantification tool that allows that to happen and the idea is that uh it’s it kind of gives a single source of Truth around the calculation techniques now biodiversity is much more complex uh to
Measure then carbon with climate and and many other things because you’re dealing with thousands of different species pces that keep moving around uh and so the view was taken I think quite sensibly to measure uh habitats as opposed to biodiversity biodiversity is the living part of nature um animals plants Etc uh
Habitats are uh much more kind of general and stable uh than species so it might be a grassland or a type of BR or or type of broadleaf woodland or something like that and so the biodiversity metric uses habitats as a proxy for uh biodiversity so so so that you kind of
Have some sort of consistency uh over time and it’s more meaningful and so uh kind of in a sentence then bringing that together it’s an Excel document that serves as the calculation tool for biodiversity uh within the context of biodiversity Net game thank you Ry and obviously the one side of the equation
Is are the developers and the the introduction of BNG has got a non-negligible impact on the approach developers can have so Helen do you want to elaborate around that and can you kind of walk us through some of the ways developers are able to offset their biodiversity
Liability yes happy to do that um so um if you think about actually Isabelle you kind of mentioned the the three different ways that that the de velop ER can go about mitigating forther impact so you can either do it onsite within your we’ll call it the red line boundary
So your development parcel was called the redline boundary so you can you can offset your your or manage your impact on site that you can achieve a biodiversity net gain within that red line boundary failing that you would then look to um Source biodiversity units offsite um and to do that you’d
Need to find a provider so somebody who had already had land available and had gone through the process C of setting up uh a biodiversity offset from which you could then buy uh your units from and then finally um we have in place now the government’s uh statutory credit system
So if all else fails you can’t do it onsite you can’t do it offsite you would then look to purchase those units from from the government or those credits from the government but fundamental to that process is what we call the the mitigation hierarchy so the mitigation hierarchies one of the key principles
Around uh the biodiversity net gain process and what it asks you to do is to look at your site your Redline boundary and um get a better understanding of the value of biodiversity on that site in the first instance so you’re not automatically going to an offset you’re not automatically going to credits
You’re looking at how you can deliver the biodiversity um uh requirement within the redline boundary and the first step on that mitigation hierarchy is all about avoiding impact in the in the first place then you would go to minimizing your impact and then you would go to enhancing or or mitigating
Or compensating for that that um uh impact within the redline boundary there’s some um uh kind of key considerations that you might want to look at when you’re trying to do this so if your site is actually quite H has actually got quite a high biodiversity
Value on there it’s going to be really tricky to void a lot of that it’s going to be hard to get the the the the numbers right to stack up um if there’s a large amount of of um biodiversity Rich habitats within that because that biodivers from a from a a commercial
Perspective that that that habitat type is actually quite costly um to mitigate for it can take a long time to recreate or be tricky to recreate so you’re trying to avoid those those rich areas of biodiversity within your Redline boundary as much as possible um and then
The other point though is um around biodiversity offsetting is that the market for biodiversity offsets is still quite um it’s still quite young essentially there’s a lot of people that are talking about and providing biodiversity units and within the market but there’s a kind of a lack of
Confidence so if they establish those biodiversity units who’s going to be buying them from them so and there’s obviously a financial upfront um kind of cost to to establishing that so the market is in a this limbo situation which means if you can’t deliver a on site you’re not necessarily going to be
Able to find a biodiversity offset provider nearby to help you manage that impact or mitigate for that impact so then the final option as we’ve mentioned is the is a government credits and the government credits have been put in place to ensure that the um the uh that
That development could still carry on in the absence of any Offset you can still carry on um uh development and uh however they are the last line of defense so you you would have to have demonstrated that you’ve gone to you’ve done as much as you can on site you’ve
Looked for those offsets they’re not available this is the only way that we’re going to carry on but the other thing that they’ve done is that they’ve priced those biodiversity credits actually very high much higher than you would expect to Source from a an offset provider locally and they’ve done that
Because they don’t want to out compete with the local market they want to get that market going so um yeah I think I hope that explains kind of the the three options and the different kind of considerations that we have to to take on board when we decide
How we’re going to deliver that and meet Our obligation thank you very much hen and I think it’s so it’s a very interesting uh in terms of approach and the changes are non negligible and we have to bear in mind that um B&G hasn’t yet started as
In it’s going live on the 12th of February so you know everything is in the making and uh Joe the lust has done Lads of research um and work around uh the mitigations that Helen mentioned around onsite and offsite um from your experience know what does a successful BNG actually look
Like um in the first instance um if you’re doing looking at bers in game for it to be successful should be really following the 10 good practice principles um that outline some of what headen already touched on so the mitigation hierarchy uh stakeholder engagement uring that the units or the off settings
Local there’s the trading rules in there but they’re now put into the metric as well um and looking to deliver wider benefits and ensure incredible and credible Byers units and transparency so as a starting point you should really be following that best practice principles and there is a BS standard for b verset
Game but that really focuses on the design and the early stages there’s not much in ter terms of best practice for onwards delivery and that’s partly what hen’s touching on there credibility um Integrity of the biodiversity units that might be on the market um who’s delivering them there’s not gatekeeping
On who can own and manage B net gain at the moment there are with other types of offset mitigation but with BNG anybody can deliver bers net gain onsite and offsite so there is a lack of gatekeeping which could cause some issues further down the line if units aren’t delivered they’re not sustainable
Thanks a lot Joe I was taking notes got cut off um thank you so much so the implementation of BNG comes with its set of of challenges as you mentioned uh gatekeeping being one of them um and it’s the challenges are for all the stakeholders involved in the planning
Process and if we start with local authorities Gareth um you know local authorities have an incredible role to play in uh in that what do you think you know what are the challenges what challenges are you expecting and how do you think Lo 3s can address them okay um
Right I I was I I’ll try and be as Su as I can because there are a lot and so much as I think biodiversity again is a new initiative you know we’ve used the word like paradigm shift and addressing a nature crisis so it’s big for local
Authorities like it is big for house builders and developers and and and I think you know for the for the country in general but it’s causing a lot of excitement at the moment because the time scales are very tight so you mentioned Isabelle biodiversity net gain
Goes live on the 12th of February so any planning application from the 12th of Feb onwards will need to deliver 10% but there’s lots of different types of planning applications so just to be clear biodiversity goes live for M the majority of Majors the the decent size planning applications from the 12th of
February but smaller applications like minors so miners are things like housing sites of less than TW 10 dwellings or one less than 1,000 square meters of employment land that doesn’t go live until the 2nd of April and then we have some of the really big strategic infrastructure things like power
Stations and solar Farms that doesn’t go live till 2025 I say that because just to exemplify there’s a heck of a lot happening isn’t there when it comes to different so the I think the first challenge is that small window of time how do we get organized the the
Legislation is there the secondary guide uh legislation is only just been published some of the guidan is in draft so a lot of local authorities are still kind of digesting this information and there’s still some questions that you know we don’t necessarily know know how to to to answer completely yet so I
Think it’s fair to say to people listening there will be bumps in the road for all of us but when it comes down to it one of the big challenges will be the the skills and capacity of local authorities to deal with this now a lot of authorities do have ecologists
For example but a lot don’t you know we have 300 odd different local authorities so it’s really hard to generalize but you know I was speaking to one Authority in darbishire a district in darbishire and they just don’t employ an ecologist so how do they make sense of net gain
You know they’re developing Partnerships with other organizations like local Wildlife trust to bring in some of that expertise we recommend that local authorities increasingly look cross border as well to work with their neighbors and certainly some areas like greater Manchester they’re in a lot better position than others because under the
Combined Authority the 10 local authorities there were very closely together they’ve got a joint plan they’ve got a joint timeline they’ve identified areas of opportunity for net gain at that kind of strategic level so I think that’s really important for local authorities as well but also one
Of the other issue and I’m sure that we’ll come to this throughout this debate is around how we Monitor and enforce net gain as well so You’ mentioned it the the law states that net gain has got to be delivered for 30 years or more that’s a long time for a
Local authority to monitor you know we we’re used to monitoring a development until it’s built and finished and then it’s kind of down to the public to tell us if anything’s going wrong but net gain requires 30 years of monitoring uh and and maybe some enforcement as well
So you know how do we set ourselves up for that technologically and organizationally some of as as Helen said some of this net gain is delivered not just on the site but offsite now that that offsite location it might be in the same local Authority but it could
Be somewhere else and so how do we get round that in terms of money monitoring enforcement as well and and then there are new Concepts like habitat management and monitoring plans we’ve got to get our heads around and understand what they look like and what a good one looks
Like as well so through through p and the local government Association I think we are encouraging local authorities to work together we have a stakeholder model sorry a sector LE model where we think there some local authorities doing this really well and others can learn
From that but a lot and equally um we work a lot with the private sector through the future homes Hub which are doing a great job because I think private housing developers and local authorities have got a lot in common on this and we need to be helping each
Other get along along the line but but the other final thing I’d like to mention I think particularly relevant to this audience is just the amount of data and information that authorities are going to have to take on board with this as well so there’s new data and new
Information about this thing called net gain in s sites in your area or outside your your area and that all needs to be brought into our existing planning data and people like rafy will know some of the back office planning systems are not that sophisticated and haven’t changed
That much in about 30 years time there there a whole range of things that I think we are looking for Innovation and Enterprise to help us support and address thank you Gareth and uh yeah I think local authorties are really facing a tough ched now uh with so many things
To address in in a very short amount of time um but the other side are developers and and as we mentioned the you know the 30-year um is a long time to look at um at um the progress of 10% of biodiversity increase how does that
Affect cost and how do you approach that um in terms of a the creation of the biodiversity unit Market as well Helen so in terms of cost of biodiversity Net game it’s um and I think this is one of the main challenges for the developer sector isn’t necessarily the cost because we have
Done um at Barett we’ve done we’ve been working on biodiversity Net game for for I would say almost four years now maybe coming up to five where we initially got involved in helping to um uh author the U biodiversity net gain guidance document that cim Syria and Aima put
Together so that was that was a while ago taking that information we did retrospective assessments on a handful of our our development so looking to apply that guidance uh and and trying to to work out whether or not business as usual the way we normally design and
Develop our our our um our um our develop M and where the business as usual was going to help us achieve a biodiversity net gain and quite frankly no it wasn’t because what we were doing was taking the ecology information too late in the day we were basically designing our developments in absence
Almost of some of that ecology information so if we took that information to the front end of our design and uh development life cycle process we could actually achieve biodiversity net gain within our developments without it costing fundamentally more than what we were already having to do in the first place
The issue comes when you start to bring in the consideration too late in the day and you’re having to go to potentially an offset which a is not available B could be much more than you had put in your viability plans right at the beginning so really having a clear
Understanding of what the requirements are and frontloading your ecology and Landscaping is key to managing those costs along the development life cycle and I think because biodiversity net gain is still very new to to a lot of Developers out then it’s it’s going to be difficult for especially developers
To really get their heads around this and that’s where where we’re going to see some really inflated cost and issues around that um but I yeah I work uh with the future homes Hub to try and deliver some of this this key messaging and learnings that we’ve had to to other
Developers in the sector and work with gareth’s colleagues at PA to to kind of disseminate those those learnings as well thank you very much Helen and I can definitely as as an architect and having built quite a few um building uh across the country I can see how the
Integration of uh biodiversity in the thinking and the development early on um will a shift how we design buildings but also can be you know a way to not make it kind of an afterthought uh and therefore add so much cost to it uh sorry uh rafy Tech buttl NE uh you know
Obviously time is short what do you see and what do you anticipate in terms of button Le in uh the implementation of b& sure so there’s there’s lots of kind of tactical uh bottlenecks but fundamentally I think there are there are three levers here that or or three constraints here that are really
Important to know so the first is that LPA is are already resource constraint particularly around ecology there was a study done a couple of years ago by ali um The Association of local government ecologists which showed that 45% of lpas at that time to end of 2021 didn’t have
An ecologist and those that did didn’t have generally didn’t have full-time access to an ecologist they shared the ecologist with another organization or another LPA so lpas are already really resource constrained b& is an additional statutory Duty for them it’s non-negotiable uh and it needs to be
Done and it’s extremely important uh to protect the remaining wildlife in uh Britain and to in England and to and to help it kind of recover and then fundamentally as Gareth mentioned B&G is a dayto an information challenge um organization need to understand what the state of
Biodiversity is at the start but then track it for 30 years and track it across multiple different stakeholders local planning authorities but also developers facilities companies ecological Consultants who will change over the 30 years um and it need so and this information needs to be uh kind of
Processed in such a way that it it helps people drive to action so for example you need to be able to understand that some areas are more ecologically sensitive or important than others and that’s difficult for humans to do there’s just so much information and so
Many people need to engage with it and so actually it’s a perfect problem if you like for s for software to address uh and that’s what we’re doing with my CIA so the bottlenecks are are those that I mentioned the software really is the solution um and and what gets quite
Interesting and exciting with a view of kind of better ecological and environmental outcomes is the idea in something we’re building which we call the b& passport uh and that allows for any given site to be tracked right from the start so when when a developer starts thinking about the application
All the way through through the the application process to monitoring reporting for 30 years and if we get that right uh and I think you know burner is is is as well placed as any organization to build it and and we’re already started uh if we get that right
That can really address these key bottlenecks and so we’re engaging with Partners up and down the value chain if You’ like um um and local planning authorities to make that happen and and actually that would be a really significant Leever for addressing what we see as the key bottlenecks uh that
Potentially could make b& uh not work it’s just worth me saying that there’s a lot of stake here not just for English Wildlife um but a Harvard Kennedy School paper a couple of months ago said that biodivers gains the most exciting and ambitious nature policy in the world
Right now other countries like Singapore Sweden Germany and Cananda are looking at what we’re doing and so if we make this work uh similar policies will spread around the world if we don’t make it work they won’t and so there’s a lot at stake here and and you our view of
Course is my Celia of the product we’ve built uh is a significant part of the solution thanks Ry and I really hope we can be leaders and make sure that it’s uh you know Paving the way for um other kind of type of same type legislation uh
Throughout the world um Joe what would be what is your view on challenges and impact of BNG yeah um so you mentioned earlier about the research that an did um so in 2022 with the land promoters and developer Federation and with home builders Federation we conducted an industrywide survey I think we reached
Around 80 land promoters and house builders developers to work out what they think the challenges are um and broadly it’s around as we’ve all mentioned today the availability of land on site offsite to deliver BNG um availability of biodiversity units again so hen’s touching on that quite a bit
Already as a house Builder um and then the capacity in still set within local planning authorities so again echoing what everybody’s saying on the school so there’s no changes there um but from our experience the land trust even when there is the skill set in the local planning Authority um there will be
Different approaches and requirements to biodiversity net gain it will be down to the each council’s interpretation biodiversity Net game how they prioritize it um we’re already setting biodiversity units at the land trust um and we’ve been working with wilch Council and with barnesy Council on a couple of offset sites and they’re
Fortunate enough to have e colist maybe more than one within the team in both councils one might be two might be parttime in Barnsley but still you got at least one FTE ecologist and even then there’s differences between their requirements so to try and me leading a
B& saying one size fits all originally it’s not going to work um and this is before mandat Net game so this is their own interpretation of the mppf and the requirement is deliver just a gain so just 1% is a gain at the moment fast forward to mandatory net gain and I’ve
Got Council saying it’s been over complicated um and they wish it kept it the way it was before it was mandatory because it was much easier to navigate and they’re actually they agree with it but they think it’s just been taken a bit too far so again it’s going to be
Down to each council’s interpretation they set the policy so I think government has said several times you can offset wherever you want in the country and yes that’s correct the metric will allow it if you go outside the national character area and the local planning Authority I think you
Need to provide 50 more 50% more biodiversity units so you can do it but it’s obviously penalized um but then the local planning authorities are getting a bit political and they want to keep it within their boundary so their planning policy will probably limit it to their
Own boundary and we’re seeing that in certain councils already um councilors do not want their biodiversity offset biodiversity losses to be offset outside so there’s going to be complexities where each Council requires different things um I’ve already mentioned the challenges around around transparency and credibility of B units on the market
Um we’ve mentioned that the gatekeeping and Garff you mentioned monitoring is key for B in again over 30 years um you can either be that’s down to the local planning Authority Under the section 106 or it’s down to a responsible body under a conservation Covenant and we haven’t touched on conservation covenants yet
But that’s key if you’ve got an offsite b& land doesn’t have to have a 106 it could have a conservation Covenant but responsible body so lots of people have concerns again about local planning authorities their monitoring and enforcement under the tcpa is already lacking Town and Country planning act
Sorry acronym already lacking um so whether they’ll be able to monitor an enforce b& over 30 years I think def have acknowledged that and that’s why we’ve now got responsible bodies band trust has seen that as a market as a window for us so we’ve applied to become
A responsible body so we’ll be delivering units but also monitoring um third parties hopefully sub to a successful application um there’s lots of challenges with BNG but we’ve been given lots of time to consider it um the ruling for b um for sang another acronym suitable alternative natural Green Space
That came in practically overnight in different places of the country so development halted neut neutrality instant ruling no planning consents so those sorts of requirements offsetting they are true challenges because all of a sudden you’ve got to to deal with it straight away BNG Helen’s been working
On it for four years land trust for three years other um house builders I know Barkley have been delivering it on site already for a number of years and their aim is to keep it on site they don’t want to go offsite so that’s their own internal policy so there’s lots of
Time to prepare for b& so hopefully everybody’s up the curve on it and it won’t be such a mess as NE neutrality was or sang was um when that ring came in in various places across the country thanks Joe I’m not going to let you drink because I could you elaborate a
Bit more on the conservation covenants which you just mentioned yeah l i did the application so I should know enough about it now it took me a while to get my head around it but so as an alternative so typically um you’d expect that offsite baret game would be secured
By a section 106 planning agreement and Gareth you’ll know more about planning agreements and 106 is than I are correct if I’m wrong but that’s that’s the expectation of a 106 it secures it binds the land the council then monitors V the 106 and then if the offset provider
Isn’t do what they’re supposed to they will step in um enforce do whatever is in their power to get that b ofet gain offset site back on track the conservation Covenant is a new legal agreement um it’s literally come into force with the environment act so it’s
New like bers net gain and it doesn’t just cover bers net gain it can cover um Heritage and other sorts of sites where you want to secure the benefits um and you’re buying the land with this legal agreement it negates the need for the local planning authority to get involved
And some people see that as a real positive and that’s not my opinion it’s just what others have said um it allows the offset provider to contract with the Cons with the responsible body who’s somebody that’s been approved by defra to Monitor and enforce the delivery of
That biodiversity net gain site or that heritage project so they are funded by the offset provider under the conservation Covenant and every one through five and then every five years thereafter they oversee and they’re reporting that that offset provider needs to carry out so it’s basically it’s a legal agreement a new legal
Agreement that binds the land and has given powers under the environment act to secure biodiversity net gain offsites and Heritage sites um so it’s quite an exciting new sort of structure to allow legal legally binding land for purposes such as V best gain and other others projects
Thanks a l Jo um as we can see there are a lot of changes with the b& uh or the implementation of b& and obviously challenges are often as part for Innovation we can see different kind of avenues for Innovation with B&G there’s a technological part the the data but
Also Innovation around the offsets so question to you all and the you know literally who wants to to answer what are the biodiversity ofet markets and how do they relate to B&G we’ve touched that a little bit but what is your view on then what do you see in
Terms of risks and what do you see in terms of potential for those any anyone wants to start Gareth I I can happily say a few words to that but I’m sure there are people on my call who on this call on on the panel
Who will know more but I mean can I just CL Y where markets sit because like biodiversity net gain the legislation it does aim to create a market very simply where a developer if they cannot deliver biodiversity on site and they don’t have a spare parcel of land to create
Biodiversity they can look to buy units of biodiversity and they costed up and as Helen said you know these National credits are very much a last resort the the aim is that local markets for net gain start to to to develop which obviously Joe’s work and the land
Trust are a big part of but other organizations are doing that too and I think for me it’s really important to think about the the kind of different scenarios so just very quickly if you think about a development very simply you’re building some houses over Factory
Or whatever you do all your on site all your net gain on site straightforward section 106 agreement as Joe said local Authority signs that you committed they monitor it another part of that it could be some of it is delivered on site and some of
It is delivered offsite but on a on a piece of land owned by the same organization so it’s a link site so you know again a similar process and the local Authority has to to sign an agreement to monitor it but the offsite stuff is you know the other scenario is
It goes to a private a private bank or a habitat bank and a local a developer buys that unit in and says you know I’m going to build these houses I need X number of BNG units I’m buying them they’re here and I’ve got a a kind of an
Agreement to do that and as Joe said that that is through think that can be done through things like the new conservation covenants and that’s a legal agreement to to allow that and importantly there will be a national register of all those habitat Banks those offsite providers so they have to
Be properly registered and properly set up so that you know there are a number of different scenarios to follow I think although there are challenges there are some f fantastic opportunities as well so I think you know local authorities themselves are land owners and some of them are starting to develop their own
Land I’m I live in Barnsley Joe so I’m really pleased to hear that you’re working in Barnsley I think that’s fantastic when other local authorities are doing doing some fantastic work around the country as well you know places like booking Hamshire they’re already up and running to try and
Develop a market in their area by asking landowners to get in touch and say are you interested in developing a a land bank and starting to put them in touch with developers who might be able to pay for credit so they say they act like a Tinder
Service for B and developers they start matching up the two to try and encourage that market to happen and I think that’s really important as well but but the other area that I’m interested in is the Strategic impact of net gain so where will net grain have the greatest benefit
For a place and that’s really important that a local Authority work strategically to identify the sites and the area where where they feel that that net gain is going to be most important and of course that’s where things like local nature recovery strategies coming which we might want to order but it is
Important you know Water Systems feel systems mountains Hills don’t stop at a local Authority border we’ve got to look Beyond just our local Authority place to see how how we can really maximize the benefits of b& so I I think it’s challenging but exciting shall we say
Isabelle and I can’t agree more on the kind of not being you know staying within boundaries um Helen should you want to yeah just to um I guess support gareth’s Point around strategic planning for biodiversity I think um it’s a it’s an area that I think has been missing I
Know that it’s been done in some um local planning Authority areas where they have aobs or areas of outstanding Beauty and and and biodiversity um uh biodiversity areas and but there’s not been this big strategic link across the whole country and that’s really what would be I think that would be a game
Changer quite frankly for for not just developers but for for others that are trying to engage in in re really reversing that Trend in biodiversity loss that we are experiencing in the UK um so so to support the local nature recovery strategies absolutely but the other thing that we’ve got to be
Cognizant of is to not be too focused just on biodiversity net gain there are host of other uh ecosystem Services uh including agriculture you know that we depend on in this country and so isolating one aspect of that you know Rich uh um ecosystem just for biodiversity may be missing certain
Opportunities so thinking about biodiversity but also thinking about the wider ecosystem services that we can uh obtain from um these these large stretches of of land across the UK um is really important so stacking of benefits is one of the words that we’ve been we’ve been talking about and how you go
About doing that is another challenge which I’m sure Joe’s going to tell us the answer to Joe could resist it um you know I’m going to talk about hen it’s um so what we’re seeing now already happening is stacking of biodiversity net gain on top of the acronym I mentioned earlier which
Is suitable alternative natural green space suit alternative natural Green Space is ruling in certain parts of the country where recreational impact from new residential development is damaging protected sites Spas sa’s sorry more acronyms but basically protected sites used to be protected under European law now it’s been it’s been changed in the
Jargon Tech the technical words behind it has changed but basically it’s trying to stop primarily dog walkers walking on protected sites it’s just it happened a couple years ago in the chilon beach Woods um it’s spreading across the country it started in 10 space and 14
Years ago um so we’re seeing now where developers need to provide a sang which is basically it’s a mitigation site so their residents will walk on this sang instead of the protected site so Sang’s already the sort of um ecosystem Services recreational benefits and you can sell it to third parties it’s got
Sang capacity you can sell it on a pair dwelling tariff on top of the sang which is essentially it’s a large walking destination you’ve got a based on what you need to provide for a sang and that’s just quite plain normal habitats and then on top of that you can enhance
Those habitats to deliver a biodiverse unit again and that’s delivering units so you can be selling s capacity and selling B units from one site so that’s a real really good and live example of stacking um bers net gain on top of other sort of ecosystem services and
It’s one that’s very it’s increasing land trust is best known for taking on sangs in the South um it’s what I started doing at the land trust uh when I was a graduate 10 years ago so we’re now seeing this b& on S being delivered across England and it’s a really
Exciting opportunity that people are taking chance of because everybody talks about St in and there s you can you can’t stack Carbon on top of a biodiversity Net game you can deliver it in the corner of a biodiversity Net game site and that’s complicated but s and
BNG you can stack it on top of the same site and you’re using the same Redline boundary to deliver two quite important sort of benefits and the income from that sang outweighs by diversity gain you can make more money from sang but going you sack them on top of each other
You are I wouldn’t say I don’t want to get into figures but maximizing that value of land and developers are clocking onto that and they’re looking to do that on their sites so that’s an example of how B&G is now being merged with sang that’s been around for years
And it’s a really exciting opportunity for developers to look at and land doners any private land owner with land where saying is required on b& we should be everywhere so I think the stacking is a really interesting approach and thanks for kind of elaborating on that um I see
Obviously that there are risks Associated and um and needs um what are the mechanism that are used Gareth you mentioned the national register uh but who holds the register for the b& uh sites and um and how can you make sure that uh there is verification on site of
The credits or the availability of credits the quality uh of the of the diversity biodiversity you I think I’m yeah so Natural England the government body will be managing the register I understand I’m looking at Helen for a nod because I think that this is all coming out quite new isn’t
It Helen I think so so Natural England will be responsible for the register but at the moment it isn’t published at our guess is it’s going to be published on the 12th of February when this thing goes live so again we’re going to be learning about that when it goes live
But but as Joe said you know we’ve been here before with other environmental and big changes in planning so you know we’ll we’ll deal with that so so the the kind of n uh it could be the legal agreement the conservation Covenant between the landowner where the units
Are and the developer that will be kind of sorry the responsible body where the units are on that register and the the the developer that will seek to ensure that those unit are delivered so so that’s a an important point of of of having that that National register but I
Do think you know that that local Authority role in in in monitoring will be so important when it comes to sites I think Joe’s already said you know there will be political pressure to try and deliver net gain as close to a development site as possible and that’s
Understandable you know if you’re a local counselor you seeing a couple of hundred houses built in your ward your local residents are going to say okay where where is that net gain what what does help improve our envirment the closer it is the better so I think local
Authorities will have to get smarter at doing that monitoring and I think that is where some of the Innovation will will will have to come in really but you know we do know that’s a bit of a poor relation in planning you know monitoring hasn’t been done very well
And very easily because there’s not many resources to do it the benefit of net gain is is that the government def that department for environment food and Rural Affairs another acronym are bringing in are bringing you know giving additional funding to local authorities because this is a new Duty so that they
Will be getting more resources to do it plus where local authorities are being enterprising and Innovative they are you know charging developers pre-application for planning advice or setting up planning performance agreements so that developers can help fund authorities to make sure that some of this uh experience and knowledge and uh is is
Required as well but I think you know there are lots of local authorities and lots of way of doing it and while it will be different I think our job is to make sure that it’s consistent and good across the country and that’s what what we’ll be aing to do thank you very
Much um so obviously you know the the market and the offsite um Market is one side but uh if we go into the kind of the more technological approach uh there’s a lot of new technology that is emerging uh from the from the b& the implementation of b& um around monitoring verification
Outcomes um any any kind of views on um where we’re going and what is working not working Ry yeah I think there are two kind of strands of where technology can help around this one is uh kind of remote monitoring and the other is around um
Kind of making sure that the work can be done um and and by that I mean storing everything the same in the right place processing it in the right way helping prioritize actions and then helping support uh actions as well to actually make uh turn the information into better
Uh environmental outcomes now I think the latter one you know I I’m biased but I think my C basically takes care of it um in terms of the remote monitoring it’s interesting because biodiversity is so much more complex than carbon or climate um translating the approaches that that have worked around the climate
Context aren’t necessarily always right in biodiversity and so I think there’s a big risk um I think ultimately it will be possible to do remote monitoring of around biodiversity but I think in the short to medium term uh we need to be careful to be really um uh to to to make
Sure that REM monitoring is sufficiently accurate in order to drive better environmental outcomes and and it’s really challenging now that you you can’t really do it with AI and satellite you need a little bit more granularity than that I think and all it takes is for you know major erors to be noticed
Uh in One path and then it you know kibos the whole whole process even though you know it might be the right way and so I think two things one technology has to be part of the answer there is a resource constraint of of of ecologists across the country even more so within
Lpas and this is a really hard challenge to to sort so we need Innovation uh we need technology but we need to make sure as well that we deploy the right technology at the right times when it’s ready uh in the right way thanks Joe yeah thanks ra I agree there’s remote
Sensing there’s a big market for it um it needs to come a long way in my opinion we the landros Baseline using remote sensing 2,300 hectars so our state um and then we ground Tru some of it and it really shows the lack of accuracy you get from ground Tru thing
We our approach is very similar to the approach that def having been taken for the living England um map layer they have on the website where it’s looking at um eror imagery infrared imagery and then you also go to ground ground TR for we’ve looked at Living England and they
Claim an 80% accuracy I think but on three of our sample sites it wasn’t near 80% unfortunately so it really shows there’s a lack of you you can’t replace boots on the ground essentially so then I agree with your next point about ecologists there is a massive shortage
Um we need more experienced ecologists Land Trust itself is looking at recruiting internally because relying on third parties causes an issue and time scale issues um so there’s there as a role for Tech but at the moment I’m not convinced that it will replace an ecologist going on the ground surveying
It because local planning authorities wouldn’t accept remote sensing for our offset sites they always say you have to have the the walkover evidence and the metric has to be populated as such using that data fa enough thanks to headen so just to come in and support both of those
Points I mean we’ve also started using uh remote surveying I should say and to to try get a really early idea of the Baseline but it has to be caveated and and used with a huge pinch of salt at the moment but they’re still very useful
Because now that we have an idea of where those those uh potential sites of grassland types that are important or Woodlands that are important we can send an ecologist to that site to to specifically look at those areas so although not we don’t have a massive
Amount of conf confidence in it at the moment it should help um save time when we do manage to get hold of a consultant because they are like hen’s teeth um and and and at the right time of the year so so there’s all these things that we need
To put in place um but it’s it’s a useful starting point I would say thanks it’s really about using technology as an enabler rafy you un mute un mute have ta to someone and it was me this time um I I just you know building
On the points that have just been said I think you really the key is you know we there’s a real Supply constraint of ecologist ecologist are absolutely key to b& and a bunch of other ecological considerations as well and so technology has to have the role in helping them
Leverage their time and expertise to do more um and the examples that been given uh my CIA uh the examples given by Helen and Joe are exactly around that Garen yeah I’m aware we’re running out of time but I think that’s a really good point yeah ecologists are lacking
What we say we say sometimes ecologists are as rare as some of the species that they’re trying to protect sometimes and and so everyone wants to look after them but equally I think there’s a big part of the like you say Rafi what can we do
That doesn’t require e colist so we talk a lot about triaging you know some application you know an a big a big planning Authority can get 200 2,000 applications year you don’t want you want have an army of ecologist couldn’t look at all those so how do you triage
To remove the ones and focus and what we talked to local authorities about you know prioritize on those that are going to have the really biggest effect and the biggest opportunities that’s important when it comes to application but I think the other side of the equation we talked a lot about planning
Applications and how we deal with you know development schemes but starting even earlier than that as Helen and I’ve started to said it’s looking at where your really important habitats are where your really important U opportunities are so on our uh uh website we’ve got case studies from places like Birmingham
Sheffield who were used in mapping to kind of pinpoint some of the most important areas for nature recovery and biodiversity net gain and that’s where you can then Focus the boots on the ground that’s where you can then start to say these are the sites that we do
Want to focus on so so I I do think it is that that combination of of expertise but also good technology and and just good management of planning Services really thank you very much so we are running out of time so I would just ask
Very kind of quick one word from each of the panelists um b& is a longterm view on the world give us like in one word your hope for the next 10 30 years will BG G you’re off mute so you can start do I have to start first on that yeah you
Will well okay can I sound say something that might sound controversial I say it’s so important and so you know I think you know such a big opportunity and so and so critical as a paradigm shift of what we’re doing but actually my big hope is that BNG becomes normal
And mainstream I.E it’s not a special thing that’s done separately it’s part of the day-to-day work of planning authorities and it’s seen alongside all the other important things like you know kind of trans for infrastructure schools and doctors that it’s just this is what we have to do to create good places so
That’s that’s my hope can I say as well I’m going to put a link to our website a bit of a plug for some FAQs and things that we do put on our website that might be useful to people not just local authorities but anyone interested in this field absolutely thank you very
Much Gareth rafy I’m gonna g made such a good point I’m going to kind of join us so obvious I think I think in in 10 years time we’re going to look back and think it was completely bizarre that we didn’t take into account biodiversity as a central consideration uh in Supply
Chains both in in construction and planning but also others uh and so I think you know B&G will just seem obvious in 10 years time Joe oh Helen sorry you were out of me oh um thank you yeah I have said this loads of times but
Um we’ve seen this in the past that not one sector will reverse the the the trend and biodiversity loss we need to start uh amalgamating commercial uh government and uh and third sector NGO conservation organizations to work together to do this not one sector can
Do it on their own so that’s my big hope for b& thanks Helen Joe very quickly um I’d like to see greater protection of biodiversity that gain land after 30 years at the moment it’s not protected it could be plowed up by a farmer and there’s nothing to stop them so greater
Protection Beyond 30 years thank you thank you well I really want to thank you all for joining today and especially the panelists so thank you Helen rafy Gareth and Joe for taking the time it’s been really a pleasure I’ve learned a lot it’s really been really interesting thanks for making the effort
To not use too many acronyms or at least explain them which was great I know it’s not necessarily easy um please do feel the feedback survey and remember to share with your network all the up and calls we have for the accelerator program and for the awards the next
Positive impact panel session will be on the 27th of February and it will be on local um Authority