Welcome to the RSK Wilding news summary for Autumn 2023
I write this just as the government’s guidance on numerous aspects of biodiversity net gain (BNG) has landed, so it’s quite an interesting time!
This includes a useful overview of the whole BNG planning process, as well as BNG advice for land managers, local authorities and developers, and more specific guidance on issues such as how to create and submit a biodiversity gain plan or a habitat management and monitoring plan (HMMP); the legal agreements required to secure net gain; and the new ‘statutory biodiversity metric’ (which replaces version 4 of the Defra Biodiversity Metric). For the complete set of guidance, go to the government’s main BNG pages.
In addition, a variety of new legal instruments – primarily in the form of legally binding regulations – has also now been published, including the overarching BNG amendments to the Town and Country Planning Act, along with separate regulations in relation to the gain site register, irreplaceable habitats and developments that are exempt from BNG. The final enactment of this secondary legislation is due to take place early in the new year.
So plenty of bedtime reading for everyone!
With regard to the work of RSK Wilding, a key focus for us over the last few months has been the development of our strategic biodiversity offsetting offering, whereby we can pool the BNG requirements of a number of projects within the same geographical area (i.e., in the same local planning authority area or National Character Area as the project(s) they are offsetting). The idea of organisations or major projects having their own bespoke offsets, where we can maximise not just the biodiversity uplift but also other natural capital benefits (such as carbon sequestration, water quality improvement, flood risk mitigation or increased public access to nature), is proving very attractive, especially in those circumstances when we (Wilding) buy the land and take on all the responsibility and liabilities while the client still has the site as ‘their’ offset, i.e., all the gain and none of the pain!
Another interesting development recently has been the number of large estates that have asked us to assess their environmental baseline (including carbon, biodiversity, water quality, etc.), all with a view to monitoring the long-term benefits associated with different landscape-level interventions. Ultimately, of course, the intention here is to understand how these improvements in natural capital can, through green finance, be turned into new nature-based income streams. Of course, this has long been possible through the carbon markets, but it is great to see how land management practices focused on enhancing biodiversity, improving downstream water quality, etc., can also be rewarded. At last, nature is starting to be properly valued. Of course, in England, the most obvious ‘route to market’ for biodiversity enhancement is BNG, but this works only when there is a ready source of developments requiring offsets.
In other news, RSK Wilding is on the verge of applying to Defra to become a responsible body under the Environment Act, which will hopefully come to fruition in the next couple of months. This will mean that we can act as regulator for others’ BNG, offsetting and/or habitat banking, thus allowing us to make sure that the process is delivered effectively. While this might mean that we need to get involved in enforcement for poorly delivered offsetting, the hope is very much that it never comes to this: good regulation is more about the carrot (encouraging good biodiversity performance) than the stick (punitive enforcement measures).
Finally, it was interesting that during this Autumn 2023 period, Natural England published its prices for statutory biodiversity credits. I think it’s safe to say that, even though we were expecting these to be high – after all, the aim is to ensure that these are very much a last resort for developers that have exhausted every other route of achieving BNG for their project – many people were surprised about just how high the prices are. Furthermore, in most cases, these prices will need to be doubled, since they will often be some distance from the project they are offsetting and will therefore be subject to the spatial risk multiplier in the biodiversity metric.
Wishing you all a great Christmas and a very Happy (and Wild, though maybe not too wild) New Year!
Jon Davies, Director, RSK Wilding