BNG Case Study: New Biodiversity Laws in Action

Oliver Lewis

Founder of Joe’s Blooms

Oliver Lewis founded Joe's Blooms, offering digital tools for top-quality Biodiversity Gain Plans and Net Gain Metric Sheets. His background includes UK Government work on international climate agreements fighting against climate change. Oliver has extensive BNG expertise, helping hundreds of planning applications meet the new BNG rules.

In this section read more about:

New biodiversity laws set to secure over 23,500 football fields worth of natural habitat in England each year
Research Methodology
Data Summary

New biodiversity laws set to secure over 23,500 football fields worth of natural habitat in England each year

About Biodiversity Net Gain

‘Biodiversity Net Gain’ (BNG) requires property developers to invest in measures that increase the amount of plants and wildlife in the local area by 10%, making UK towns and villages greener and helping to support nature recovery.

Due to start to come into effect this November, the new statutory requirements are part of the 2021 Environment Act and require property developers to fill a biodiversity metric and produce a ‘Biodiversity Gain Plan’ (BGP). Once ready, the BGP must be approved by the Local Planning Authority (LPA) in order to allow development to begin.

Methodology

The Government’s publicly available Net Gain Impact Assessment found that the key natural capital benefits of the ‘Net Gain’ policy are derived from habitat loss avoided and habitat created:

1. Government figures show that 5,428 ha of habitat would be created per year, and 9,644 ha per year of habitat damage would be avoided per year (p.37 of the Net Gain Impact Assessment, link).
2. We calculated football field size by taking the minimum permitted size for international games as set out in the IFAB Law of the Game (6,400m2, link).

3. We combined the Net Gain Impact Assessment figures with Government estimates for total development per year to calculate the avoided habitat loss / habitat creation for each ha developed (HM Government, November 2019, p.36, link). According to this, 16,232 ha total development per year will result in:
- a. 0.5941 avoided habitat loss for each ha developed
- b. 0.3344 habitat created for each ha developed

4. To calculate the figures for each LPA, we used ONS data on the number of planning decisions and size of developments in each LPA to calculate the total ha developed in each LPA each year (link). We then multiplied the total area developed in each LPA with the equivalent values in point 3 (a) and (b) to calculate the increase in biodiversity in each LPA each year.

The impact of BNG on English regions and top 10 metropolitan areas is below. These calculations are based on figures and estimates from 2021.

Natural habitat secured by region Joe's Blooms

Table 1: Natural habitat secured by region

Natural habitat secured by metropolitan areas Joe's Blooms

Table 2: Natural habitat secured by metropolitan areas

In summary

New analysis reveals that the Government’s Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) laws will secure over 15,000 hectares, or 23,500 football pitches, worth of biodiversity in England each year.
Set to come into effect this November, BNG requires property developers to invest in measures that increase the biodiversity score of sites by at least 10% as part of the planning process.
This policy will boost natural habitat across the country, with data showing the biggest uplifts experienced in the South East and East of England across the regions.

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