This page is intended to help local authorities understand the skills and expertise they are likely to need to meet the requirements of mandatory BNG. It also provides examples of how local authorities can best secure natural environment skills and expertise and a slide pack that can be used by local authority officers to give a BNG overview to colleagues and members. The resources were developed with our BNG Network and the Association of Local Government Ecologists (ALGE).
Statutory requirements for local authorities
Process and determine planning applications to ensure they meet the legislative requirements;
Assess and approve biodiversity gain plans to ensure they meet legislative requirements; and
Report on BNG delivery and plans in their authority area.
The Environment Act applies a pre-commencement condition to all planning permissions granted under the TCPA for a biodiversity gain plan to be submitted and approved by the LPA. The purpose of the biodiversity gain plan is to provide a clear and consistent document with which a developer can demonstrate that they are meeting BNG requirements and a planning authority can check whether the proposals meet the biodiversity gain objective.
Beyond statutory requirements, various actions are recommended below for both the planning and corporate parts of a local council to enable effective implementation of BNG and to achieve wider benefits for the local authority. These will also support the enhanced biodiversity duty under the Natural Environment and Rural Communities (NERC) Act 2000 and legislative biodiversity reporting requirements that the Environment Act brings in.
Recommended actions beyond statutory requirements
Monitor compliance with planning conditions and legal agreements in relation to BNG.
Monitor BNG delivery in the long-term.
Enforcement of non-compliance.
Secure obligations through legal agreements for off-site BNG delivery.
Pre-application advice service – BNG needs to be embedded early in planning for a development, and this should speed up decision-making at the application stage; plus, providing pre-application advice is an income-generation opportunity for the local authority.
A strategic approach to BNG, linking into the relevant Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS), once available; considering site allocations for development, as well as potential site allocations for nature recovery; and how BNG links to other plans, strategies and objectives.
Establish a biodiversity evidence base - a reasonably up-to-date understanding of the quality and quantity of habitats in their area – this will act as a baseline from which biodiversity gain can be measured.
Providing opportunities for BNG offset, as in setting up or facilitating a gain site, on the council estate, including parks – another income-generation opportunity.
Skills and expertise needed for these requirements
We’ve highlighted below the key skills and expertise needed to deliver mandatory BNG requirements, based on conversations with local authorities and building on work developed by Mike Oxford of ALGE.
These skills and the tasks identified are not mutually exclusive, so you may find an individual who can cover more than one or that multiple individuals can cover a small subset of each. For example, the role of an ‘environmental planner’ could pick up a number of these and developing this role alongside the new requirements may be a useful direction for local authorities to consider going forward.
Natural environment and ecological skills and expertise required by local authorities to deliver BNG include: habitat survey and classification, using metrics in habitat assessment, environmental impact assessment and mitigation, and interpreting results and critical analysis.
Where a council already has access to natural environment/ecological support, existing staff will usually have the skills and expertise to deliver BNG requirements, but additional resources may be required, and some training and upskilling will probably be needed, e.g. on the Biodiversity Metric Tools. It’s likely to be most efficient to employ staff or contract external input to cover wider ecological and natural environment advice alongside BNG.
Helping inform planning policy to reflect biodiversity net gain requirements and locally specific circumstances (such as local ecological networks, LNRS), ensuring join-up with other policies in the Local Plan and advising on a relevant evidence base and monitoring.
Advising on and inputting to other relevant planning documents, such as Supplementary Planning Documents (SPDs), guidance for developers and local validation checklists.
Assessment of Biodiversity Metric calculations, BNG statements and biodiversity gain plans submitted by developers to ensure they meet national and local requirements, including whether on and off-site provision of BNG is acceptable and appropriate, looking beyond the numbers to check that plans make sense ecologically. Providing pre-application advice on these and other elements relating to BNG, and negotiating with developers.
Providing advice to councillors, including at the Planning Committee.
Assessing off-site biodiversity provision to ensure it meets requirements.
Checking monitoring reports to ensure compliance and, where necessary, assisting enforcement officers.
Collating biodiversity information, data management and reporting as required under the Environment Act.
Survey and assessment of biodiversity gain sites for any local authority-led BNG scheme.
Advice on embedding BNG and natural environment aspects more generally into wider Council strategies and objectives.
We would encourage LPAs to develop a locally specific BNG policy. The Council may also wish to take an integrated policy approach to planning for the environment in its area.
Biodiversity net gain is required for most planning applications, so Development Management (DM) officers will need to be aware of the requirements and understand when to seek specialist input and advice. This will need to be factored in early in the process to meet timescales for determination. This is likely to require some additional learning and development for DM officers. Increasing the capacity and expertise of DM officers in assessing BNG and ecological aspects of planning applications will help to reduce pressure on specialists.
It may be worth considering changes to validation processes and/or training for validation staff, so that applications not accompanied by the correct BNG documentation are not validated.
If your approach to BNG is to be successful, compliance will need to be checked – making sure that habitats have been delivered and are being managed and maintained in accordance with the planning permission and associated legal agreements - and that non-compliance is enforced against. This will require specialist skills to meet the requirements of the legislation.
Off-site delivery of biodiversity net gain requires legal agreements to be in place for at least 30 years, and if a local authority sets up its own off-site scheme, further legal input will be needed. Monitoring of BNG should be secured through the legal agreements, but reports will need to be checked over the duration of the agreement.
A national digital biodiversity gain site register has been developed by Natural England, which covers off-site BNG sites. Local authorities will need to make sure they are recording and have access to the right data to monitor compliance and report on BNG delivery both on- and off-site over time.
Other skills and expertise will also come into play, especially if the local authority sets up its own scheme for delivering off-site BNG: - Coordination & Project Management - Finance & Property Services - Estates/Land Management – Negotiation.
Sourcing natural environment expertise
We collated examples of how local authorities currently source natural environment and ecological expertise to inform planning policy and decision-making in 2021. A few general points came up in our conversations:
Having a group or team providing natural environment expertise rather than one individual can help address peaks and troughs in workloads and ensure better job satisfaction by allowing individuals to cover multiple work areas, e.g. planning application advice alongside environmental project work, as well as providing resilience. It can also help with embedding a BNG approach across Council services.
In-house natural environment staff are often already unable to meet all the calls on their time, and mandatory BNG will only add to their workloads. This issue obviously does not come up where the service is out-sourced or provided via a Service Level Agreement (SLA), but SLAs will need additional resourcing if they do not already cover BNG.
Individuals rarely come into roles with both ecological and planning skills. Experience is needed to develop a solutions-focused approach and ensure that advice is defendable, so natural environment specialists often need on-the-job training before they are fully capable of delivering advice to planning colleagues. This is where the role of a professionalised environmental planner covering BNG, alongside SUDS, climate, flood management and people could be beneficial.
NOTE THE FOLLOWING EXAMPLES WERE COLLATED IN 2021, SO MAY NOT REFLECT CURRENT PRACTICE BY THESE LOCAL AUTHORITIES.
Bolsover District Council have a SLA with Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, which covers ecological advice on both planning applications and policy. Planning applications are by exception, i.e. officers send them on for the Trust to provide advice, but occasionally the Trust pick them out from planning lists themselves. The arrangement generally works well for Bolsover DC as the Trust have the expertise, including local knowledge of the district and provide good advice.
Recently, Bolsover DC have commissioned the Trust separately to prepare a local nature recovery network for the district. The Trust is also involved in the county-level Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS) and Bolsover hope this work on their local network will nest into the LNRS and provide a level of detail more relevant to the district level. Their Principal Planning Officer project manages and oversees work on this and wider environmental and BNG work to ensure join-up and links to policy and planning delivery across the district.
Place Services is a leading public sector consultancy set up by Essex County Council to provide ecological services to councils in Essex, London, the south east and east of England, also covering landscape, archaeology and historic environment advice. They currently have pay-as-you-go SLAs for ecology with 16 LPAs across England and 100% profit goes to Essex CC for their wider services. Some of these LPAs have their own ecologists but not enough capacity to cover all that the LPA needs. The wider teams support green infrastructure and environmental projects, countryside management services for country parks and county highways.
There are currently nine ecologists in the team. Each LPA has one lead, but there is flexibility in the team to cover for each other. They offer a flexible arrangement (e.g. can offer cover when LPA staff are on extended leave/secondment) and aim to be part of the LPA's team. Because they count as part of shared services, it offers an easy contracting option for LPAs.
The bulk of their work is Development Management – LPAs send them the applications they want advice on - but they also input to policy including Local Plan BNG assessments when required and provide training for both officers and members. They have recently worked on two Biodiversity SPDs which promote BNG, currently awaiting publication. They also cover pre-application advice, including on BNG, and will meet with applicants as part of this service.
Warwickshire County Council have been running their BNG scheme since 2012, when they were a Defra biodiversity offsetting pilot. They provide an ecology, archaeology and landscape service to all but two of the Warwickshire LPAs, plus Coventry and Solihull, funded by SLAs, although a 'free' BNG service has been taken up by all LPAs in Warwickshire. The holistic service screens all planning applications covering all ecological issues, species and habitats, i.e. NERC Act duties and planning requirements. They also provide advice on planning policy and a pre-application discretionary advice service to developers.
The 14-strong ecological team has flexibility to cover different aspects of the work, which means that more staff can be pulled in if planning application numbers are high, plus it gives staff a range of skills and makes the job more interesting. They have skills in understanding financial aspects and viability, plus how the development cycle works, not just ecology. This means they can provide solutions-focused advice to LPAs and developers and for example, work with land agents considering land prices at an early stage. A recent gap in the team of habitat management and creation skills - undertaking condition assessments, finding sites, etc – has recently been filled to help with their offsite BNG scheme.
Cheshire West and Chester Council employs three biodiversity officers (though one of those posts is currently vacant), providing ecological advice on planning applications and planning policy, natural environment project work and administering their Great Crested Newt District Level Licensing scheme.
The Council has a no net biodiversity loss policy in their Local Plan that refers to the Biodiversity Metric, alongside a local ecological network policy, and is developing an interim advice note on BNG in advance of the statutory requirements. These have been developed through close working between Planning Policy, DM and the biodiversity officers, with a focus on what can realistically be delivered with the resources and skills available to them and a view that their approach can move forward over time.
At the moment, the Biodiversity Metric is applied on major applications and requested on minor applications on a case by case basis, mainly on those with priority habitats on site. Based on this experience, they are considering how the small sites Metric may be used in the future. They are developing an offsite BNG scheme with around 0.5FTE dedicated to habitat creation work. They’re also looking at how BNG and carbon offsetting can be linked and how BNG delivers to address the Council’s declared climate emergency. It is recognised that additional resources will be required both in terms of specialist expertise, but also in DM, as they move towards an approach that meets the mandatory BNG requirements.
Plymouth Council have a Natural Infrastructure team that provides advice to DM on planning applications, alongside working on planning policy, plus environmental projects, countryside services and parks. This allows a joined up cross-Council approach to BNG on- and offsite delivery. Their BNG approach has been developed over time in a step-wise way that is integrated with the Council’s wider place-making strategy.
Natural Infrastructure team advice is trusted by council planners because of their solutions-focused approach and a broad understanding by officers of how the natural environment contributes to place-making in the city. Two full-time ecologists work on applications, covering all ecological issues and greenspace. Surgeries are held for DM officers to discuss issues and manage potential conflicts with other aims, find compromises and mitigations, etc. There is also strong political support for BNG to be delivered on all planning applications.
Stockport Council’s Nature Development Officer, alongside the countryside officer the Senior Arboriculture and Habitat Officer in the Neighbourhoods Team (previously Parks), covers all ecological advice on planning alongside other council ecological issues, including countryside site management plans.
Stockport don't have a BNG policy in their Local Plan yet although current policy encourages biodiversity enhancement. Their Nature Development Officer uses current policy plus the NPPF to engage with developers of major applications at pre-application stage and asks developers to use the DEFRA Biodiversity Metric to demonstrate delivery of net gain as well as include biodiversity enhancements that aren’t measured in the habitat-based Metric. The officer is also working with Planning Policy colleagues to develop a Biodiversity Planning Advisory note and look at future planning policy, recognising that a strategic, proactive approach will be much easier than the current reactive one. It’s difficult to keep up with the level of work in the borough and additional resources and expertise will be needed as Stockport move forward on their BNG journey.
BNG essentials for local authorities - November 2023
This PDF slide pack from November 2023 is for local authority officers to use to provide an overview of biodiversity net gain to colleagues, members and senior managers. It can be used as it is or used as the basis for developing a more locally-specific training presentation for your local authority, for example by adding in what your council is doing on BNG, your Local Plan policy context, etc. If you are from a local authority and would like a copy of the PowerPoint presentation, please email [email protected]. You can view the recording of a walkthrough of the essentials below too.
Note that this was published in November 2023, so whilst most of the content is still relevant, some will no longer be accurate, so slides should be checked and updated as required.
DISCLAIMER:The PAS team updates these pages regularly to reflect current guidance on biodiversity net gain as best we can. Our goal is to provide accurate, timely information to support local planning authorities. If you are from a local authority and have any questions about the content or need further information, please contact us at [email protected]. This page was last updated on 02/10/25.