26th November 2024
Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) legislation requires many habitats to be monitored for 30 years. Whilst off-site habitats must all be monitored, Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) decide whether on-site habitats should be – by determining whether an on-site habitat is deemed “significant”.
There is government guidance on which on-site habitats are significant. The government definition includes the majority of habitats which are to be enhanced or newly created, but notably misses out all retentions of existing habitats (even valuable ones which it is important to maintain).
Some LPAs are going beyond the government advice and making nearly all on-site habitats significant. This has obvious benefits for local nature recovery, and all the other outcomes that flow from it such as clean air, climate mitigation and adaptation, and people’s wellbeing. Other LPAs, however, are concerned about the resourcing implications of monitoring so many habitats.
In fact, if done in the right way, making more habitats significant can be better for resourcing than including fewer. The key is how you approach monitoring fees.
Monitoring fees are an opportunity to increase resourcing
LPAs are legally entitled to charge developers a BNG monitoring fee, covering 100% of the council’s costs to monitor the habitats associated with the development. This can cover all costs, including staff time and legal advice, software tools, and travel expenses if occasional site visits are expected. (For an example, see how Eastleigh Council is using monitoring fees to cover software costs.)
If only a small number of habitats are entered into monitoring, the council’s monitoring costs across all developments will be low and each year the BNG monitoring fees will add up to a small total. This amount may be too small to do anything meaningful with. It can be difficult to efficiently backfill dribs and drabs of staff time, totalling some fraction of an FTE, leading to a risk that the council just absorbs this extra burden without additional resourcing.
However, if the majority of habitats are deemed significant, the council’s monitoring costs and corresponding fees will add up to a meaningful amount. This can be used to recruit additional permanent staff, such as ecologists, monitoring officers, or enforcement officers. (For an example, see how North Yorkshire Council has used monitoring fees to hire additional ecologists.)
So, the more inclusive the approach to monitoring on-site habitats, the more the LPA can meaningfully increase its resourcing and the pool of expertise within its team.
What about the administrative burden of arranging all the fees?
In short, this doesn’t have to be burdensome.
To collect a monitoring fee, the LPA needs to sign a Section 106 agreement with the developer. However, all this agreement needs to do is collect the single lump-sum monitoring fee. This means it can be a template agreement which is re-used for every development, without the need for case-by-case legal input. PAS has provided a template Section 106 agreement, or the council can carry out a one-off legal drafting process to create its own template. (Note that the PAS template is based on annual monitoring payments, whereas most councils are planning a single lump-sum to avoid the risk of default in future years; this adjustment is easily made to the template.)
The habitats need to be legally secured, but for most on-site habitats it is appropriate to do this using a planning condition rather than by inclusion in the Section 106 agreement. (PAS has also provided a template for this planning condition.)
The opportunities of Biodiversity Net Gain
Approached this way, every habitat that is deemed significant is an opportunity rather than a cost.
There will always be some habitats for which monitoring isn’t appropriate (although even small areas of green space can make an important contribution in some settings).
But applying monitoring to the strong majority of habitats can achieve better outcomes for local communities, whilst at the same time enabling councils to expand their teams and expertise.
Get help to implement this approach
If you’d like to know more, you can:
- See case studies on how councils are using monitoring fees to cover costs and expand resourcing.
- Learn about how Verna’s Mycelia software makes it possible to easily monitor thousands of habitats over hundreds of developments – including automatic assessment of habitat significance. You can find out more on our Mycelia page, or get in touch on mycelia@verna.earth.