Opportunities for farmers to provide and sell biodiversity units
Biodiversity net gain is a recent strategy that has been introduced to develop and contribute to the recovery of nature and its purpose is to ensure that the habitat for wildlife is in a better condition than prior to development.
With effect from 12 February 2024 most new developments are required to provide a 10% biodiversity net gain and from 2 April 2024 this requirement came into effect for small development sites.
Every new planning permission in England is now deemed to be granted subject to a condition that development cannot begin until the developer has submitted a biodiversity gain plan to the local planning authority and the local planning authority has approved the plan. Developers must try to avoid loss of habitat to a piece of land that they plan to undertake development work on, but if they are not able to do this a developer must create habitat either on-site or off-site. On-site means the land subject to the planning application that the development work is on and off-site means either the developer’s own land away from the relevant development site or biodiversity units bought from a land manager.
The introduction of this strategy has created opportunities for farmers, acting as land managers, to benefit financially by creating and enhancing habitats on their land to generate off-site biodiversity units for sale to developers. The market for off-site units is presently emerging and developers who are unable to provide required biodiversity net gain on their own development sites are likely to seek to purchase units off-site.
Farmers who may be contemplating the creation of biodiversity units should consider what units are presently on their land and what they wish to create having regard to what nature recovery is needed in their area. They would need to calculate how many biodiversity units would be on their site, which would be undertaken by a qualified ecologist applying a prescribed formula to undertake a calculation.
Land managers may seek to create or enhance certain habitats to sell units for specific development, or may create habitats and sell units to a developer at a later time (known as habitat banking). To sell units relevant land managers need to commit to creating and managing habitats for at least 30 years under a legal agreement, which may either be a planning obligation (section 106 agreement) with a local planning authority or a conservation covenant with a responsible body. When land has been secured for biodiversity units, it would then need to be registered on a Biodiversity Net Gain Register.
The market for sale of biodiversity units provides a new opportunity to use land for the provision and sale of bio-diversity units. This may be particularly attractive to farmers who are keen to diversify their income or gain a return on less productive areas of farming land that are not productive. It could also assist in increasing wildlife on parts of the farm-holding to provide aesthetic and general ecological benefits.
