With less than a year to go, we look back on 2022 and the year to come…

It has been just over one year since the Environment Act 2021 completed its passage through Parliament and received Royal Assent. A year from now, the mandatory requirement for all developments to demonstrate Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) is expected to come into force. As we reach the halfway mark of the adoption process, ILM reflects on the year it has had and the year to come...

With less than a year to go, Local Planning Authorities (LPA's) across England are at varying stages of adopting Biodiversity Net Gain as policy within their Local Plans. Some are already expecting developments to show a 10% net gain; even before it becomes a policy requirement. There are even more ambitious locations requiring a 20% uplift on biodiversity levels. However, we believe that the overall majority are likely to set the minimum requirement at 10% (per the Act itself).

Like many in the industry, we are keenly awaiting the Secondary Legislation that was consulted on in Spring 2022, which is expected to provide further guidance on the intricacies of the BNG process for LPA's, monitoring and enforcement. We understand from Natural England that the expected release date of this is February 2023, and many LPA's are awaiting on the outcome of this before putting their site registration, credit sales and monitoring systems in place.

In the meantime, however, and despite the above, credit sales are still taking place where LPA's are demanding a net gain already - whether it has made it into their current Local Plans or not. We are seeing some LPA's work from the basis of 'preferred providers' of biodiversity credits to refer developers to. ILM has been working hard this year to build strong relationships with LAP's and inform them of the Biodiversity Gain Sites that have been assessed for their potential. We also have 30 year management plans in place and as such, are ready for registration and credit sales.

 The Defra Metric (used to calculate a site's potential) was consulted on in September 2022, with what is expected to become the statutory Metric, also due for release this year - it will replace version 3.1 with version 4.0.

Defra also set its environmental targets in December 2022 (as per the Act), having missed their deadline of the 31st October 2022. The Government subsequently published their Environmental Improvement Plan in January 2023 setting out in more detail how we will achieve these targets, including interim targets.

We saw Conservation Covenants come into force on the 18th November 2022, which form a key legal mechanism through which conservation objectives will be legally upheld. They will also form a means by which post-credit sale management obligations will become legally binding. Securing credits Section 106 Agreements still remains an option.

Alongside Conservation Covenants, several other items under the Environment Act came into force as of the beginning of December 2022. For example, the additions made to the Natural Environment and Communities Act 2006, require LPA's to produce regular biodiversity reports (the first within three years, subsequent reports every five years). These set out the status of biodiversity gains and the Biodiversity Offset Management Plans approved by the LPA's, alongside their biodiversity targets, how they plan to achieve them, and progress on this in each update report (see sections 102 & 103 of Part 6 in the Environment Act).

We are very much part-way through the adoption process, not only in terms of the timeline, but also in terms of LPA's being at varying stages of getting to grips with the upcoming obligation for them to require BNG on all developments within their boundaries. Landowners are signing up with us to be first in line, and we would urge developers to notify us of their pipeline sooner rather than later, to ensure they are better equipped to meet their upcoming (and any existing) offsite BNG requirements. We look forward to working together in the future.