In the budget last week, the Government announced its intention to introduce a new exemption from Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) requirements for residential developments on brownfield (aka previously developed) sites up to 1.5 hectares. This will be in addition to the existing exemption for development on sites measuring 0.2 hectares or below (provided that onsite priority habitats are not negatively impacted).
The Government has said that its aim is to “make it cheaper and simpler to build both council and private houses” and support its “‘brownfield-first’ ambitions”. This follows the consultation which raised concerns that, due to existing constraints and site conditions, it has often been found difficult to provide on-site enhancements on such schemes and necessitated reliance on offsite units. It also highlighted potential adverse impacts on the viability of these schemes from BNG requirements.
The timetable for this change will be published “in due course” according to the Government, but will require further regulations to enact it and set out transitional arrangements for its implementation.
The consultation details indicate that they are intending to adopt a similar definition for a “previously developed site” as that used in the Building Safety Regulations (which was recently broadened – for more on that see here), but the new regulations will need to confirm this and also what will qualify as a “residential” scheme under the exemption. For example, if a retail unit is included within a mainly residential development, will this still qualify for the exemption and, if not, will the whole scheme lose the exemption or only the proportion that is retail? Anyone who has followed the recent evolution of Building safety legislation will be aware of the complexities that can arise when seeking to define those sorts of details.
Developers of prospective small to medium scale residential schemes in urban settings will no doubt welcome this new exemption, but its impact on the market for offsite BNG units is yet to be seen. In theory, any new exemption will likely reduce demand in this market, but will there be specific types of units that will be particularly impacted by this move? If so, habitat bank providers may want to bear this in mind when considering the types of units they bring forward.
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