Move to January 2024 for BNG

Yesterday the government announced they are going to push back the start date of BNG becoming mandatory for new housing, industrial or commercial developments from November 2023 to January 2024. The small sites BNG requirements start date remains the same (April 2024) and so does the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (2025).

As you can imagine yesterday there were a lot of questions regarding WHY the change when across the many industries involved with land, build, nature and planning we have been working towards the November 2023 deadline for several years.

To understand the views of the Planning Sector the Royal Town Planning Institute conducted a survey of their members and at the time of asking, 61% of the public sector planners couldn’t confirm that they would have a dedicated BNG resource and ecological expertise in-house in place by November 2023 (for more details of the survey please view RoyalTownPlanningInstitute

With this and the associated levels of uncertainty attached to it, in short, more guidance and regulations were required and with a view to helping planning authorities and developers gain a greater understanding, and thorough the provision of the necessary tools and information to assess projects and sites, the government are to release the following in November 2023:

• Statutory biodiversity metric (critical for calculating the correct biodiversity gain)

• Draft biodiversity gain plan template (to help developers prepare for what they will need to complete during the planning application stages)

• Habitat Management and Monitoring Plan template (to set out how the improved significant on-site and off-site habitats will be managed for the long term)

• Package of Biodiversity Net Gain guidance ( to set out further advice for landowners, developers, and Local Planning Authorities around their role and responsibilities in delivering mandatory Biodiversity Net Gain)

Team Green can certainly see the benefits in this, and we hope the additional time assists planners, councils, developers and all those involved with implementing BNG.

In the meantime its ‘business as usual’ and we will continue to assist our clients on all things BNG on their schemes.

For the full Gov Website Page on BNG please look here... Biodiversity Net Gain moves a step closer with the timetable set out - https://www.gov.uk/government/news/biodiversity-net-gain-moves-step-closer-with-timetable-set-out