Although not yet law in the UK, many local planning authorities, particularly in England are using BNG already and the process is likely to be made law during 2023.

Scotland is likely to follow at a later date.

The assessment is based on a DEFRA agreed metric that calculates a requirement based on the habitats lost in the development.

From this the developer can bid for BNG units to offset their requirement.

Farmers and landowners can benefit from this by creating habitats on their land to sell/lease to developers. There is a requirement for the habitat to be maintained for 30 years after the development.

The habitat created is assessed and allocated with a number of BNG credits that can then be put up for auction or sold direct to a developer.

Laurence Gould have good experience of dealing with this for existing clients and therefore understand the market and the potential rewards available to farmers and landowners for providing BNG units to the wider market.

Because of our broader knowledge of the sector we are able to put these offers in the context of the situation at your own farm and assess the true opportunity cost of using land to create BNG credits.

In turn, nutrient offsetting provides a similar but different option for land that is able to be used to reduce levels of nutrient runoff (such as nitrogen or phosphates) by changing farming practice. Farmers and landowners may be approached by, for example, water companies to take their land out of arable production for 30-50 years and be paid a capital sum for doing so.

Again, understanding the pros and cons of a potential approach is crucial as it is very easy to undervalue the benefit of this to a water company who may no longer need to build or upgrade a water treatment plant because land alongside water courses has been taken out of production and reduced runoff.