Biodiversity net gain making development unviable
The NFB has been warning the government for four years that their Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) strategy will punish small and medium sized builders (SMEs) the most; making many developments unviable and seeing huge swathes of farming land lost to the BNG credit market.
Early indications suggest this and worse is happening, with NFB members reporting that they may have to re-submit applications to meet legal requirements, are seeing pushback on legal submissions and the stability of offsite credit pricing.
Confusion between the BNG hierarchy, blueline requirements, condition overreach, legal agreements and uncompetitive BNG credit costs are also being flagged up at an alarming rate.
The HBA board has again written to the prime minister’s team at Number 10 regarding our concerns and once again reinforced the need for the small sites metric to be increased to fifty homes and BNG onsite solutions to be part of the BNG calculator.
The industry needs to come together on this topic, else we risk hundreds of developments made unviable, and/or local plan affordable housing requirements being challenged, thus wasting more time in planning and costing companies tens of thousands of pounds.
Any housebuilders or constructors, whether members or non-members, that are experiencing BNG concerns should contact NFB membership services to report their concerns and experiences. The team will then put you in touch with the NFB Policy Team, who are collating details of this to bring to the prime minister.
