10th January 2025
Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) is a bold step towards nature recovery in England, which creates opportunities for all Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) to generate environmental benefits and expand resourcing.
To unlock these benefits, LPAs need to work collaboratively across planning and enforcement teams, from pre-application services to post-development monitoring and reporting.
This article shares advice and examples on how Verna’s Mycelia software can help at each of these stages.
If you would like to talk through how to use Mycelia in these ways, please feel free to reach out to us on mycelia@verna.earth.
This is a time of great opportunity
Tim Burkinshaw, Principal Ecologist, North Yorkshire Council
Pre-Application – engaging applicants early in line with best practice
Best practice, including the Future Homes Hub / PAS idealised BNG workflow, recommends that engagement with Biodiversity Net Gain early in the planning process leads to better outcomes for biodiversity. This facilitates project planning and transparency, helping to achieve effective delivery of BNG targets and maximising local biodiversity gains as advised by Defra and CIEEM.
Offering BNG advice as part of pre-app services is also an opportunity for LPAs to cover costs and reduce time spent on applications, at pre-app and later stages.
LPAs are using Mycelia at pre-app stage, including by sharing Mycelia’s analyses with applicants via email or screenshare. This can help by:
- Using Mycelia’s automatic error-checks to inform applicants of potential problems with draft Biodiversity Metrics, so they can fix these problems prior to application.
- Checking the baseline biodiversity value of a site using Mycelia’s summary displays and tools, and helping to identify the value of biodiversity gains that are achievable within the site.
- Highlighting where off-site biodiversity provision may be required for the development, which helps the applicant to plan ahead and the LPA to build up a picture of overall off-site needs in the area.
- Taking a “first look” at what kinds of legal agreements might be appropriate for the biodiversity gains proposed, using Mycelia’s automated advice on which habitats need to be legally secured.
Mycelia does a lot of the hard work for you, and helps to avoid time-consuming emails back and forth with an applicant when subsequently assessing applications
Des Hobson, Ecologist, Swindon Borough Council
Validation – in terms of BNG, is this application valid?
It is important to identify applications where national validation requirements for BNG (set out in the Planning Practice Guidance), or local requirements (set out in a Local Validation Checklist) may not have been met.
Mycelia automatically and instantly checks Biodiversity Metrics for validation issues, and provides clear messages for applicants on the specific problems to be rectified. This gives officers the confidence to quickly and easily make decisions and respond to applicants, preventing problematic applications from being validated and creating extra work and risks down the line.
Everyone in the planning community needs to realise how difficult it would be to do all the validation and assessment work without Mycelia, and the hours and days saved by the software
Lisa Malter, Ecologist, Eastleigh Borough Council
Determination – do the draft plans feasibly deliver 10% (or the local requirement) for BNG?
Planning officers must assess whether 10% (or the local requirement) BNG can be delivered by the proposed development.
Mycelia helps officers to address this, working in collaboration with colleagues and appplicants, by:
- Automatically flagging errors and ecological risks in the proposed plans, helping to focus staff time where it matters – including when and how to call on ecology teams.
- Providing a one-page visual diagram of the habitat journeys, to easily understand the proposed plans at a glance.
- Identifying which habitats are likely to need to be legally secured and monitored for 30 years, allowing you to establish whether planning conditions or Section 106 Agreements are needed – and ensure that, where appropriate, you charge a monitoring fee.
Mycelia has made it so easy to track habitats and pick out those bits in the Metric that are not quite right
Carolyn Herbert, Ecology Officer, Isle of Wight Council
Discharge of conditions – are the final plans for biodiversity gain appropriate?
After development approval, the statutory BNG condition must be discharged before the commencement of construction.
Officers can:
- Use Mycelia’s automatic checks of Biodiversity Metrics to instantly see whether the submitted Metric contains errors that prevent condition discharge – allowing the application to be immediately refused if appropriate, rather than progressing into the 8-week statutory determination timescale.
- Review and approve the Biodiversity Gain Plan in Mycelia by cross referencing on-site habitat journeys from baseline to post-development, and ensuring any off-site provision is adequate and appropriate.
Mycelia makes it much quicker to review the BNG Metric. It’s also great that I can use the automatic error checks in my responses
Elizabeth Burrows, Senior Ecologist, Wiltshire Council
Monitoring and enforcement – how are the planned ecosystems progressing over the statutory 30-year BNG period?
As the development commences, the Habitat Management and Monitoring Plan must be implemented and the LPA has a duty to assure its delivery.
This requires tracking ecological data for each habitat over 30 years. Across all relevant developments, this will soon reach thousands of individual habitats.
Recording all of the biodiversity data and documentation for the site in Mycelia supports officers to:
- Track compliance with the agreed monitoring schedule, oversee the receipt of monitoring reports and identify late or missing reports.
- Easily track the ecological status of habitats at an individual level over time, building up the granular ecological data required to ensure BNG delivery and record the information required for statutory BNG reporting.
- Identify the need for enforcement actions where compliance has failed and instigate penalties where appropriate.
Mycelia is brilliant, we love the software. We really appreciate the simplicity and user friendliness of the tool
Simone Turner, Ecology Officer, Hammersmith & Fulham Council
Reporting – analysing BNG data for statutory duties and other audiences
Meeting NERC Act requirements for BNG reporting to central government will require pulling together habitat-level data from every Biodiversity Metric consented each year.
As BNG progresses, transparent tracking of biodiversity information will also become increasingly important for councillors, colleagues, and the public.
Mycelia’s reporting tools will help with all of these needs – for example including an automatic process to fill in the NERC Act reporting spreadsheet, avoiding days’ worth of copying and pasting from individual metric files.
I have no doubt that Mycelia’s reporting functionality will prove just as good as assessment
Sarah Boyd, Ecologist, Eastleigh Borough Council
If you would like to talk about any of the above advice, or get help with using Mycelia across teams at your LPA, please feel free to reach out to us on mycelia@verna.earth.