Biodiversity Net Gain, guidance for developers and ecological consultants

The Biodiversity Gain (Town and Country Planning) (Modifications and Amendments) (England) Regulations 2024 (opens new window) modify the general biodiversity condition for planning permissions which are phased development. Instead of the standard approach for the Biodiversity Gain Plan: 

• an Overall Biodiversity Gain Plan must be submitted to and approved by the planning authority before any development can be begun;
• a Phase Biodiversity Gain Plan for each phase must be submitted to and approved by the planning authority before the development of that phase can be begun.

In recognition that phased development can often be implemented over a long period of time, the purpose of the overall Biodiversity Gain Plan is to set a clear upfront framework for how the biodiversity gain objective of at least a 10% gain is expected to be met across the entire development.

Each Phase Biodiversity Gain Plan will subsequently set out a phase's contribution to biodiversity net gain and track progress towards the overall biodiversity gain objective for the development once clear proposals for each phase have been developed. It is envisaged that, for an outline planning permission for phased development, the Phase Biodiversity Gain Plan would be prepared alongside the application for reserve matter approvals for a phase.

Further details can be found in paragraphs 049 - 055 of the draft Planning Practice Guidance for Biodiversity Net Gain. (opens new window)

Submitting the BNG metric as part of your planning application and discharge of conditions application

Please note that Section 9 of the Metric User Guide states that the metric should be submitted as a macro disabled Excel file.

This is because the Planning Portal cannot handle macro-enabled files.