CIEEM calls on members to help defend BNG
The Government is expected to shortly announce its planned amendments to mandatory Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) for small sites following its consultation earlier this year.
It has been widely rumoured that it is planning to extend the de minimis exemption area (where sites will not be subject to the mandatory requirement) from the current 25m2 to 0.5 ha. This would exempt over 95% of current development projects from delivering net gain and effectively wipe out more than £50 million in the annual market value of BNG overnight, triggering a likely collapse.
This, in turn, will choke off BNG units supply as private investors pull out, leaving those developers still subject to mandatory BNG paying more for biodiversity gains that are further away and dealing yet another devastating blow to nature recovery.
Changing the de minimis exemption to 0.1 ha, as CIEEM and many others have recommended, would still exempt 66% of smaller developments and is a sensible and pragmatic compromise.
Please contact your local MP and ask them to advocate for a 0.1 ha exemption. You can do this by:
- Copying one of the template letters below that best fits your MP (Labour, other political party).
- Personalising the message – even a few sentences about why nature matters to you, or about local wildlife or habitats in your constituency, makes a big difference.
- Sending it by email or post to your MP. You can find your MP’s contact details at www.theyworkforyou.com