Information about Mycelia
Purpose of this page
This page gathers all the key details about Mycelia in one place. It’s focused mainly on technical and legal details to assist procurement processes.
If you’d like to learn more about what Mycelia does, and hear from Local Authorities using it, please take a look at our Mycelia page.
If you need any information which isn’t covered here, or you’d like to ask us any other questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch by emailing mycelia@verna.earth.
Contents of this page
Introduction to Mycelia and Verna
Verna’s company details and financial status
Introduction to Mycelia and Verna
Mycelia is a software tool that helps local government teams drive better environmental outcomes in less time. It includes end-to-end support for every aspect of the Biodiversity Net Gain process – from validation and assessment, to monitoring and reporting.
It has been developed through collaborative research involving ecologists at more than 40 Local Authorities. It aims to help you drive better outcomes, with less stress and more control.
Mycelia is developed and maintained by Verna, a software company focused on positive climate and nature impact. We were set up by sector specialists (including a former head of climate change mitigation at Defra), and have supported many public sector bodies including Defra, DESNZ, the Environment Agency, and National Highways.
Why Mycelia is needed
We built Mycelia because we want to help Local Planning Authorities benefit from Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG).
BNG is a great opportunity to create better local environments, improve outcomes for citizens, and potentially generate revenue to support Authorities’ activities.
But BNG also brings new responsibilities and risks. We did a year’s research, engaging with over 40 Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) as well as expert stakeholders such as the Planning Advisory Service and the Association of Local Government Ecologists. We found the biggest concerns are:
- The risk of slowdowns and backlogs in the planning system, caused by the need to assess BNG plans and Metrics prior to consent.
- The workload of monitoring each BNG plan for 30 years following consent. This starts with the introduction of mandatory BNG and grows year-on-year as projects are consented, so LPAs will soon be monitoring thousands of projects.
- The legal duty to monitor, enforce, and report BNG progress, and respond to FOI requests, with associated legal risks of challenge from government, citizens, and other stakeholders.
- The need to link BNG implementation to other environmental and social objectives (such as Local Nature Recovery Strategies), to maximise benefits and avoid “box-ticking” outcomes.
We’ve designed Mycelia to help with these challenges. The software is based on our research and has been co-developed with a working group of seven LPAs, and we will continue to improve and refine it collaboratively with the sector.
In time, we want Mycelia to help with all ecology and environment processes within LPAs. We’re starting with BNG because it’s new and brings significant risks and burdens, but Mycelia already includes support for some other aspects of ecology and we will increase its wider functionality over time.
What Mycelia does
Mycelia helps with data management and assessment at every stage of the BNG process. It provides a home for every BNG case – from validation and assessment, to monitoring and reporting – and aggregated reports across all cases.
It enables you to:
- Save time across teams and throughout the BNG process, both pre- and post-determination, with tailor-made software.
- Drive better environmental outcomes, using tools designed by ecologists and environmental scientists, with links to wider issues including Local Nature Recovery Strategies.
- Catch and manage risks, with smart checks, alerts, and prioritisation underpinned by ecological science.
As far as we’re aware, Mycelia is the only solution around that’s tailor-made to support the ecology elements of planning. It’s designed to work alongside, not replace, general purpose planning case management software.
Some of Mycelia’s ecology-specific features include:
- Drag-and-drop import of the Biodiversity Metric, and radically easier interfaces for interacting with it at validation, assessment, and monitoring. No need to sift through spreadsheet-style data ever again.
- Full and faithful recreation of the BNG algorithm. Powers smart error-checking, including automated validation checks, and auto-reporting of Biodiversity Unit progress.
- Handles all BNG requirements, including tracking monitoring data, responsibilities, and deadlines for every case, and automated reporting for statutory duties and wider stakeholders.
- Ecology-driven risk-flagging and prioritisation, based on insights from leading ecologists.
- Built from the ground up to handle and display spatial data. Enables geospatial functions including map views and location-based search, and is futureproofed for receiving applicants’ GIS data.
- Based on extensive research with local government ecologists, and co-developed with a working group of seven Local Planning Authorities.
You can learn a bit more about what Mycelia does, and hear from Local Authorities using it, on our Mycelia page.
Please also feel free to email us on mycelia@verna.earth. We can show you a demo and answer any questions.
Terms and conditions
We’ve tried to make the terms on which we offer Mycelia as friendly to LPAs as possible. We want to help make BNG work for LPAs, and to do that best Mycelia needs to be easy to adopt.
You can read the standard Mycelia contract here (opens in new tab). If, after speaking to us, you’d like to use the software, we’ll send you a version tailored to your LPA for signing.
The key terms in the contract include:
Pricing
The standard price is:
- £10,000 + VAT per year for LPAs with smaller planning loads (those that receive the lower level of Defra BNG burdens funding).
- £20,000 + VAT per year for LPAs with larger planning loads (those that receive the higher level of Defra BNG burdens funding).
This is a flat fee per LPA: you can have any number of user logins, all within the single fee.
This fee includes, at no additional cost, an allowance of 50 gigabytes of data storage. If you build up more than 50 gigabytes of data stored on Mycelia, then at renewal there will be an additional data fee which passes onto you the cost to Verna of storing and handling the extra data (at cost i.e. with no profit for Verna). The exact cost will depend on how much data you upload per case, and how cloud data costs vary in the future. But to give a rough idea, 50 gigabytes might equate to around 1000 cases managed on Mycelia, and each additional 50 gigabytes / 1000 cases might cost around £100 per year.
Contract length
The initial contract term is 12 months.
Renewal
You have a right to renew the contract every 12 months, but no obligation to do so. You can cancel the contract at any time.
If you renew, by default the price can only increase in line with inflation.
The only circumstances in which an above-inflation increase can occur are:
- (As under Pricing above) If you store more than 50 gigabytes of data on Mycelia, in which case the price can increase by the direct cost to us of storing and handling the extra data (and no more, i.e. with no element of profit).
- If Mycelia’s functionality widens significantly beyond assessment, monitoring, and reporting of ecology cases. In this case, we will work with you to agree a new price which reflects the additional value being provided (and you always have a right to cancel should agreement not be reached).
Offboarding
If you choose to stop using Mycelia at any point in the future, we will provide assistance with moving your data out of Mycelia so that you have it available for future use.
Support
Support is included at no extra cost.
This includes email and phone support, continuously available during standard working hours.
Privacy
Verna is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (reference number ZA784487), and we are fully GDPR compliant.
The privacy provisions in the Mycelia terms and conditions are GDPR compliant. Mycelia only stores personal data uploaded by the LPA, for its own use and records.
If you’d like more detail on anything related to terms and conditions, please feel free to email us on mycelia@verna.earth.
Technical details
This section aims to provide the information you need to be confident that Mycelia is a sound software product from a technical perspective. If you’d like any further information, feel free to email us on mycelia@verna.earth.
Cloud solution
Mycelia is a fully cloud-based service, accessed through a web browser. It does not require the installation of any applications on local devices.
We deliver Mycelia using large, mainstream cloud providers, to ensure resilience and security. Our main provider is fly.io, a mainstream provider used by large companies all over the world across 34 regions each with multiple datacentres.
System requirements
Mycelia helps with tasks that users typically carry out at their desks, so its interface is designed for use on desktops and laptops.
Mycelia will work well with up-to-date versions of mainstream browsers, including Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Apple Safari.
Uptime and resilience
We aim for 100% uptime, outside of maintenance periods which we schedule out of working hours and let you know about in advance.
We take a wide range of measures to ensure resilience of the service, including:
- Our cloud providers use datacentres with uninterruptible power supplies and backup generators.
- All of the data stored on Mycelia is automatically backed up on a regular basis.
- Mycelia’s performance is continuously monitored by automatic systems, on both the server side and the client side.
- As a cloud-based solution, the resources allocated to Mycelia can be rapidly scaled with user demand.
Security
We take security extremely seriously. Mycelia’s design incorporates a wide range of industry best practices to ensure security, including:
- All users are required to log in and pass authentication in order to use Mycelia.
- Each LPA’s data is kept separate and isolated from other LPAs’ data.
- The system is regularly scanned for security vulnerabilities by automated systems.
- We have chosen our supply chain (the third-party software and providers we rely on to deliver Mycelia) to use suppliers which take security equally seriously, and we regularly re-check this.
- All Mycelia data is held and processed in the UK. The datacentres are fully certified and protected by multiple layers of physical security. Data is encrypted in transit (e.g. between servers and users).
Verna’s company details and financial status
Verna is a limited company registered in England and Wales, with details:
- Company name: Verna Earth Solutions Ltd.
- Company number: 12745191.
- Registered address: 91 Cowley Hill, Borehamwood, England, WD6 5NA.
- VAT number: GB 371 902 988.
Verna is a robust company. We have a 3+ year track record of commercial success, including delivery of services to large public sector bodies such as Defra, DESNZ, the Environment Agency, the Ministry of Justice, and National Highways. We are backed by investors including Octopus Ventures, one of the largest technology investors in Europe.
We treat our suppliers well, and are signatories to the Prompt Payment Code.