Government consults on scrapping Small Sites BNG

In a backward step for nature recovery, the Government has today announced that it is consulting on scrapping part of the Small Sites version of mandatory Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) in England.

Whilst we have previously recognised that there have been issues with the Small Sites iteration of BNG, we do believe that these issues can be fixed and we had been led to believe that Natural England, Defra and MHCLG were committed to collaborating on solutions.

The policy for Small Sites BNG has only been in place since April 2024, so it has been barely a year from introducing it to considering getting rid of it. This is yet another example of the Government talking about supporting nature recovery but acting to undermine it. Along with the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, this is another policy curveball that will add to the uncertainty that developers and ecologists are currently grappling with.

Disappointing, just yesterday CIEEM hosted a symposium with the Institution of Environmental Sciences (IES) and the Association of Local Government Ecologists (ALGE) on Small Sites BNG and how, through a collaborative approach, we can make it work for all stakeholders.

This is a disappointingly short-sighted approach from Government and provides further evidence that its commitment to delivering win-wins for nature and development is just words with no commitment to action. We will be making our views known most strongly by all means available to us.