Are those shoots green or rose-tinted? A year in review…

Oct 7, 2024

In a recent blog Andrew Watson, development director at Savills, in looking back at circa eight months of mandatory BNG, framed the question of its impact as follows: would it be the last piece on the planning mule to make it finally Buckaroo [or]  would BNG do as it was intended, and lead to a paradigm shift in the way that the planning system and the natural environment interface?

Perhaps predictably, he goes on to identify – and this will resonate with anyone who has been close to the space – that neither of these admittedly extreme scenarios have actually played out. So what happened?

The Green Finance Institute observed in a recent report that just 0.5% of planning applications submitted after 12 February 2024 have been subject to BNG. The remainder have presumably enjoyed exemptions, and taking into account the logjammed planning system it is hard to see this situation reversing any time soon.

Needless to say, with thousands of hectares’ worth of potential BNG supply, unless matched by a meaningful level of demand there will be no incentive for landowners to bring land out of agricultural production, or indeed undertake any kind of capital-intensive restoration work. The mandatory BNG framework will, in other words, fail to meet a core objective.

So what has happened? Initial feedback suggests that many developers have found they can meet their 10% BNG requirement via onsite environmental improvements, and indeed the BNG Mitigation Hierarchy encourages this. Or, put another way, it penalises attempts to solve environmental degradation from development by making token enhancements to ecosystems situated far away, potentially leading to localised, nature-free wastelands.

However, onsite BNG is subject to less stringent habitat management requirements, meaning that the BNG is at serious, systematic risk of non-delivery. Not only that, but some developers are in effect trying to ‘stack’ the need for amenity greenspace with their onsite BNG provision – two birds with one stone. But it goes without saying that, whilst access to nature is a critically important social good, these can be contradictory objectives.

Space for children to play and dogs to be walked can often be to the detriment of delicate, complex ecosystems, which face physical damage and the danger of litter, pollution, predation and invasive pathogens. This loophole needs to be addressed urgently.

Another commonly made observation is that Local Planning Authorities are under-resourced and lack the expertise to properly interrogate BNG submissions, meaning they must outsource to expensive ecologist consultants. Unfamiliarity with the legal agreements which would underpin the habitat management (i.e. section 106 or a conservation covenant with a ‘Responsible Body’) is also holding back the Local Planning Authorities. This is hardly surprising, given how new the legislation is, but clearly shared learning and the standardisation of legal agreements would help.

So what should landowners thinking about BNG do about this? The most prudent way you can retain optionality is to be in the market but not committed. Listing with a platform like aka.land means that developers and brokers can signal demand before you have to undertake the process of baseline audits, selecting an ecologist, drafting a habitat management scheme, drawing up legals and so forth. The timescales are not insignificant and should not be underestimated. But they compare favourably with the process of housebuilding, meaning you can afford to be reactive rather than proactive. Of course, you still need to be in the market, as otherwise it could be your neighbour being paid to restore habitats on his or her land.

author avatar
Marc Garfield
In ullamcorper at nunc id elementum. Aenean dictum et arcu eu semper. Vivamus vitae sagittis arcu.