Biodiversity Net Gain today (April 2) becomes mandatory for small site developments. As RichardPritchard asked back in February: ‘Are we Ready’? There’s a lot to learn and quickly for developers working with and submitting planning applications, and for local planning authorities (LPAs) receiving and considering them. Two of the big challenges for all of us are:
Where to start? There is an impressive body of work out there – how do I navigate the plethora of guidance, regulations, case studies, toolkits?
Understanding what happens before and after ‘my part’ of the process. LPA planners need to understand the sorts of things developers are grappling with, developers need to know what support the LPA can provide, and what information is required and when.
BNG Online – getting acquainted quickly with BNG I recently moved across programmes at PAS to begin work on BNG. In at the deep end, lots to learn and enormous shoes to fill. My colleagues Beccy Moberly and Richard Crawley have steered the PAS BNG ship expertly, creating a wealth of pragmatic BNG advice and establishing a network of over 1,000 members.
In my new pair of enormous shoes, and standing on the shoulders of giants, I’ve been working on what (somewhat serendipitously) is the perfect foil for accelerating my understanding. It’s called ‘BNG Online’, it launches today and is a collaboration between Future Homes Hub & PAS.
‘BNG Online’ is a new digital resource that brings together in one place, insight, guidance, and tools for delivering BNG. It is designed to help developers and local planning authorities to work together and factor in BNG at the key stages of the planning process. It is organised around 4 key development ‘stages’:
Sites – how are they selected and allocated?
Application – what advice is available, what information is required, what do I need to do?
Delivery – delivering and maintaining habitats, on & off-site.
Monitoring – how do we know what’s happening and who is responsible?
This is just a start Some elements of BNG Online are more developed than others (e.g. what does (can?) anyone really know about monitoring until BNG is a little more established?). The planning application stages (the ‘PAS bit’) include a summary of each stage, key considerations for LPAs and links to regulations, guidance and resources that will assist in preparing and processing a planning application. It is not exhaustive, still being developed (Beta they call it) and will grow and be updated regularly as we learn more from the experiences of planners and applicants using it.
The sector working together This is a great example of the sector coming together. As well as collaborating with Future Homes Hub, BNG Online has been developed with the input of Natural England, Defra, DLUHC, Joe’s Blooms, Verna.Earth and development industry bodies representing both large and SME developers.
Why this is important If I have learned one thing over the last month, it is that it is a mistake (despite how the system for planning approval has been designed) to think of BNG as a post-permission matter. Successful strategies for the delivery of biodiversity gain have to be considered early, and throughout the planning process. BNG is new for everyone and the more information that LPAs and applicants can share, the more we can all learn about what makes the process efficient and what works best. BNG Online is designed to facilitate this.
We will update and improve BNG Online as we learn more. This is where planners and developers using it can help – tell me what you think here or email me (martin.hutchings@local.gov.uk) and let me know how it can be improved.
Ever since Natural England issued advice to the councils around Stodmarsh we have been trying to be helpful to the councils caught up by nutrient neutrality. We are approaching three years now*. It has been a tough gig – previously I have been heard to whinge about GDPR but by comparison to nutrients it is a walk in the park.
A key part of our support, alongside our web content and legal advice (shortly to be updated), we have held regular meetings with the lead people from the catchment, helping everyone involved learn from each other [and – no joke – go through the Kubler Ross grief cycle]. As is the way these days, mostly the meetings are virtual get-togethers and we have been fortunate to get the help and support of the key players including DLUHC, Defra, NE, EA, Ofwat, and some of the trusts.
However last week [before all the nutrient news over the weekend] we met up in person, at the London Wetland Centre [recommended as a meeting venue if you can get there]. It felt like good timing – many councils have submitted a bid to get involved delivering mitigation, and while the assessment process grinds on in government this was a chance to think through what might happen next. It feels like** there may be many millions of pounds up for grabs – so we wanted people to think beyond the normal “we need money and resources” and to spell out what else they might need to get things done fast.
Perhaps playing to the strengths of being in the same room we had quite an old-fashioned table discussion complete with (real) post-its and pens. This post is a reflection then on the conversation my table had, along with some thoughts I had on the train home. Let’s start with the six post-its from my table: [note that I haven’t had time to turn this into finely crafted text and it is still quite post-it-y]
There is already lots going on in the world of nutrients
Not all of it out in the open yet or finished (or clear what is going to happen)
NE wetland guidance (its pretty finished, just needs a final shove)
Subsequent phases of the NE mitigation scheme
Credit tracking software from NE – will they let other providers use it? Tracking offsets sounds like one of those things that is more difficult than it seems
Protected sites strategies (a longer-term but more holistic approach – we are recruiting for this at the moment)
We should avoid reinventing the wheel, and most obviously learn from NE’s experiences so far from the Tees and elsewhere. Everyone is desperate to find quick solutions, but we need to find things that are robust enough to withstand the inevitable challenges.
We’d like help with process please***
Huge potential time sink if we all try to learn some of the basics from scratch. We need help, support, framework, template (whatever) :
procurement
legal
site screening / assessment
probity
due diligence
Beyond the routine paperwork, its helpful also to understand relationships and roles
talking to farmers / landowners
working with trusts and ecological groups
calling on ecological expertise
We’d also like help with stewardship please
Lots of potential process specific to stewardship. This isn’t natural territory for planners. We probably don’t want to get too involved unless we really have to, but it would appear that enforcement (at least) is coming our way.
management, maintenance over the long term
enforcement (perhaps in another council’s area)
Doing “deals” unconnected with planning applications is novel. There might also be some probity angles if we’re using council-owned land or giving some private people the benefit of sewarage upgrades for free. We don’t really understand all this stuff and don’t want legal challenge or delay. Other people must – can they help?
Doing deals with land owners requires “certainty” for them beyond nutrients
Land owners want to enter into the most advantageous deal
they need to understand time (land locked in) and money
and their other options: what is nutrients worth? What is BNG worth?
Interaction with other types of payments and systems. Risk of delay / unforseen consequences
eg BNG, but also FIPL, and possibly ELMS (if that’s still a thing) and probably other things we don’t even know about
Councils (and others) want to make deals best value
yes nutrient credits, but also secondary benefits (eg public access) and other stacked environmental credits
Do we understand the business model? is it simple and clear (to landowners especially). Are all the values known?
We want more data, but not much more complexity
There remains a frustrating lack of basic data and lots of it is controlled. We still can’t share maps and models in the public domain because we are told they relate to commercial assets. People seem to be doing interesting new things not just in the UK but around the world. Thats great, but LPAs not that interested in cutting edge academic research. We’re not here to do a PhD we just want to issue decisions on planning applications. We just want to know: what works? Protected Site Strategies sound like the future, a more holistic way of thinking about catchments. They might be 3-5 years away – this feels like quite a long time.
Some catchments might need help with governance
Many catchments cross council boundaries, and upper- and lower- tier councils feel the pain in different ways. And, across the whole catchment, mitigation schemes might only be available in some places. It’s slightly awkward to talk about in public, but some catchments might not naturally all pull in the same direction. No names, but some councils might even act in a slightly selfish way. Who’s job is it to help everyone see the bigger picture, and to establish a more strategic approach? There are some mature river management organisations out there – is that the model we should copy? [by way of background you can see one of my favourite presentations on the governance of the River Wye https://youtu.be/EYKJnm_mRkA ]
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It was a really good day, and I think everyone being in the same place helped us understand some of the motivations and thinking across the range of organisations that were there. I think there are probably three things that I haven’t been able to let go since the meeting:
1. What is the problem we are trying to solve?
I learned the value of this question from my very first boss at PAS. I think we’ve fudged the question for a while – we talk about mitigation that somehow leads to restoration. Or perhaps, more honestly, mitigation that doesn’t prejudice restoration.
And I get it. Delivering a nutrient mitigation scheme is really really difficult and you risk making your task next to impossible if your goal is restoration. You could be setting yourself up to fail. Perhaps the correct problem we are trying to solve is “just” nutrient mitigation.
And yet, without some eye on the longer term and bigger picture, I worry that we will chew through some big lumps of cash and end up with sites in even worse condition. It annoys me both because I’m mean and also I don’t think it’s good enough.
So many people involved in the Wye crisis, extensive publicity, over a long period of time plus a lot of money pumped into schemes – yet ecological conditions declined & the socioeconomic context of the catchment has been decimated. Why is it so hard to stop the rot & restore? –
As a minimum we should understand what “restoration” actually means. We need something to keep us all honest and to ensure we are focused on what makes a difference to the catchment – otherwise its just busywork. I don’t think “just” mitigation feels right, or will look right to a sceptical public. We should be working back from fixing the site condition****.
2. Why do we STILL not have any sensible evidence?
It’s just how planners think. Show me the evidence. Let us consider options. Make some decisions. Monitor what happens. And not just planners – it’s the basics of thinking in systemic terms.
And yet we are unable to share catchments maps and infrastructure (because they belong to the water companies) and we might know some of the WWtW permit levels but we don’t know what is actually going on in the river let alone having some educated guesses why. [there are some exceptions – and growing gang of people just sticking meters into rivers]
I’ve met some really clever people working their socks off with modelling, but even they are left trying to compensate for the lack of data showing what pollution is where.
It is just stupid. Infuriating.
3. Why is it only planning that still seems to be on the hook for this?
This is a bit of a recurring theme of mine, and something I have never really got squared away in my mind properly. In LPAs we operate as “competent authorities” who take their responsibilities under the habitat regulations seriously. We heard in the High Court a few days ago that this is the right thing to do (at least for now – see planoraks for an excellent overview and simonicity for something a bit deeper into the detail).
So – and this is where I need to remind myself and everyone else that I am very very far away from a precise legal mind – why is nobody else playing the competent authority game? The Harris judgement suggests to me that it is incumbent on several other competent authorities to revisit licenses and permits when a natura site is in unfavourable condition, and I’m left wondering why it is only us in the planning world taking this seriously (and not the WFD regulators or the environmental permitting people or lots of other bits of water governance machinery that I don’t understand very well).
* The HBF will tell you they are four years in. At our event we heard from the River Mease catchment who have been going for 13 (!) years, and are on their third version of a strategy.
** Perhaps “felt like” might be more appropriate at the time of writing. It’s really unclear what is going to happen next.
*** There are big cross-overs between this list of things that the local authorities wanted and the sort of things we hear from our BNG network. Let’s have the SAME APPROACH for BNG, nutrients, carbon, tree cover and anything else please.
**** And, importantly, restoration can’t be a simple “make the river like it used to be in the 1950s”. Restoration needs to be a forward looking version reflecting the changing climate.
Planning Advisory Service 