Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Delivering Mandatory Biodiversity Net Gain in England: Consultant insights on the Statutory Biodiversity Metric, process, trading rules and practical challenges for planning and environmental lawyers

Published by a LexisNexis Planning expert

Practice notes

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Purpose of Practice Note

This Practice Note explores the idea of biodiversity net gain (BNG). Drawing on expertise from a specialist consultancy, it explains how the compulsory BNG regime is presently being applied on the ground. It does not describe the legislative framework for BNG; that is contained in Practice Note: Biodiversity net gain in England, which ought to be used alongside this Note.

How does biodiversity net gain work in practice?

This Practice Note aims to answer the following questions:

How are biodiversity units (BU) derived?
What constitute good practice principles for BNG?
What does the BNG process usually entail?
What frequent obstacles arise when implementing BNG?

How are biodiversity units calculated?

Calculating baseline biodiversity units

BNG adopts habitat type and condition as a stand-in for total biodiversity value, expressed as BU and computed via the Statutory Biodiversity Metric (SBM). BU are divided, where relevant to a site, into area-based habitat units (HU), linear hedgerow units (HeU), and aquatic linear watercourse units (WU). HU, HeU and WU are handled independently for two reasons...

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Laura Homfray

Greengage Environmental Ltd

Laura is a specialist in nature strategy, natural capital and biodiversity advisory services. She has extensive experience in developing corporate nature strategies, frameworks and guidance which allow organisations to quantify and measure changes on biodiversity and ecosystem services within their portfolios, in a way which can be linked to a company’s wider ESG goals. Prior to joining Greengage Laura was the Team Leader for the WSP UK’s Natural Capital team. Laura was a Technical Contributor to the National Guidance for BNG for the UK chartered institutes (CIRIA, CIEEM and IEMA). She has notable project experience including developing the GI Framework for Greater Manchester and piloting Natural England and Oxford University’s Environmental Benefits from Nature tool and acting as the Project Partnership Coordinator for the development of NATURE tool. Prior to moving into consultancy, Laura worked in the Yorkshire Water...

Morgan Taylor

Greengage Environmental Ltd

Morgan leads Greengage Environmental Ltd’s Nature team and has over 12 years’ experience leading on biodiverse green infrastructure design and complex ecological assessment for major development schemes and portfolio management projects. He works to deliver Biodiversity and Environmental Net Gain (BNG and ENG) and improvements in ecosystem service provision, complementing wider climate change adaptation measures. He was listed on the ENDS Power List 2023 as one of the UK's 100 most influential environmental professionals. He has sat on the panel for the UKGBC’s Nature Based Solution Steering Group, CIEEM’s Action 2030 Climate Change response group as well as the British Standard for Biodiversity Net Gain working group. He is on the quality review panels for the London Borough of Havering and Essex County Council as the biodiversity specialist. He also contributed to the UKGBC’s ‘Demystifying Green...

Web page updated on 21/05/2026

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