David Hill is Chairman and owner/founder of The Environment Bank Ltd, and co-founder and owner of the NatureSpace Partnership Ltd; a founding member of Natural England, the governments’ statutory advisers on the natural heritage and its Deputy Chair since 2011 (until May 2016), and a member of the Board of the UK government’s Joint Nature Conservation Committee (until May 2016). He is a Board Member and Trustee of the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation. He was a member of the government’s Ecosystem Markets Taskforce.
David has a doctorate in ecology from the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford. He worked for a number of NGO’s before establishing one of the first environmental consultancies in the UK, which he merged with a plc in 2002. He has a strong professional and personal interest in environmental management and biodiversity conservation and has worked in the planning and development control sector for over 25 years, advising corporate clients and developers on the environmental impacts of their projects across a range of sectors including ports, minerals and waste, housing, distribution centres, energy/renewables, recreation, highways, airports, infrastructure and water.
The Environment Bank provides biodiversity offsetting solutions for streamlining development mitigation by brokering arrangements between developers and landowners through which substantial areas of habitat are created under a market-based mechanism. The NatureSpace Partnership Ltd is rolling out the new approach for mitigating and compensating for impacts on Great crested newts, supported by Natural England, in which developers no longer have to survey for newts or move them if found. The new model involves the creation of strategic newt habitat, placed so as to maximise the favourable conservation status of newts. Developers buy-in to the scheme through a pre-application charge followed by a at-permission charge as necessary, providing substantial savings to developers in time, cost and removing business risk
