Mandatory BNG goes live

Biodiversity net gain is now a legal requirement from today (February 12) for most new sites.

After implementation was delayed twice, from November and last month, applications for new schemes in England of more than nine dwellings will now need to achieve an uplift in BNG of at least 10%.

As part of the Environment Act 2021, mandatory BNG will help deliver the government’s commitment to halt species decline by 2030, according to the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA).

DEFRA also said government was helping local planning authorities with BNG through £10.6 million of funding for the recruitment and expansion of ecologist teams and “green jobs” investment. Local authorities also have a “range of tools” to help “enforce” BNG.

BNG, according to DEFRA, means “there will be more nature after a development than before”. The 10% uplift is measured in biodiversity units which are calculated through DEFRA’s statutory metric tool. This calculates how many units a habitat contains before development, leading to how many biodiversity units are needed to provide the at least 10% improvement.

The statutory biodiversity metric considers habitats in terms of units, according to size, …