New Biodiversity Law Mandates 10% Net-Gain for UK Housing Developments
New Biodiversity Law Mandates 10% Net-Gain for UK Housing Developments
UK: New legal mandate requires housing developers to deliver at least 10% of biodiversity net-gain. Learn about its impact on over 30,000 planning applications monthly.
The legal requirement for developers to deliver Biodiversity Net-Gain (BNG) came into effect for developers of major housing projects (0.5 hectares or more, and/or 10+ dwellings) on February 12.
Now, from today (2 April), the requirement will be expanded to small housing developments and all commercial and mixed-use developments. It will impact almost 30,000 planning applications each month in England.
Developments that do not impact priority habitats and only impact less than 25 square metres of on-site habitat are among some of the only projects classed as exempt from BNG. A full list of exemptions can be found here, from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).
Going to go on a bit of a tangent but this is something that has come up previously in discussions with my right-wing family members.
They've been turning their nose up at policies like this. They argue that to solve the housing crisis in the UK that we need less red tape like this because it will only mean that houses will be built slower and that less houses will be built overall.
I'm not really convinced that the solution to the housing crisis is to simply build more houses quickly.
According to the last census in 2021 (for England only) we have 23.4 million households of which 1.5 million are unoccuped. 10.3% of these unoccuped dwellings are second homes.
If we really want to make more houses available quickly then we should be discouraging people from owning multiple houses.
If we really want to make more houses available quickly then we should be discouraging people from owning multiple houses.
Uhh...
discouraging
I don't think that's going to cut it. Legislating to prohibit maybe but not just discouraging.
I think prohibiting it altogether would be the right and best thing to do too. But otherwise discouraging through hugely increased taxes for every house someone owns beyond their first one would be better than nothing.
There's possibly some this discouragement happening already following Jeremy Hunt's latest budget and through certain councils increasing council tax on second homes (see here and here), but the more the merrier imo!
I'd argue (without any data to back it up) that most of those second homes are in places that are not economically viable places to live (rural, seasonal towns etc.)
Personally I'd say the solution is higher density housing near cities where there are jobs and current infrastructure. These immense satellite towns that stink of American suburbia are the worst case scenario and only serve to line the pockets of shitty companies like Taylor Wimpy etc.