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Fao; The Builder
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Good afternoon😁
I have got 2 large projects underway which have just gone to the Planners. The bean-counters have deployed their abacuses (abaci?) and calculated that under the new Biodiversity Net Gain legislation they attract a need for 9 and 12 trees respectively.......at £1000 per tree!!! Due to the nature of the schemes, we can't do any 'off-setting', either.
I can't get any joy in finding out where this ££ figure comes from. The Planners keep emailing the SPD to me in response to my queries - it just says £1000 with no explanation of how this figure has been arrived at.
Do you have any idea how much a BNG tree costs in your neck of the woods?
Thank you kindly.
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From what I gather the BNG is monitored over a thirty-year period and each tree needs to be monitored.
If they are asking for £1,000 per tree, that works out at roughly £33 per tree per year.
I don't know how often the trees are monitored or what all is undertaken during it but it appears not to be as simple as digging holes, planting saplings, forgetting about them and charging you £21,000 for the privilege.
Luckily, I've haven't had to be involved in these so far. It's just yet another level of compliance. Rather like having to engage 'consultants' for SAP ratings/ environmental surveys /archeological surveys/ bat surveys etc .... ad nauseam.
For these, they like you to engage a 'competent person'. The usual get-out phrase. Generally, an ecologist. I can't seem to get any sensible idea of cost since they are reluctant to generalise. The various specialists who've inevitably sprung up, insist it depends on the size of the development; location; other environmental considerations blah... blah.
From what I can see, Corby ^^ has it. There seems to be some kind of ongoing maintenance commitment for 30 years. That, I guess, is where the reluctance to generalise comes from.
I'm so sorry to be of absolutely no use to you here Jack. I've done a little Googling (BNG ecologists), and, as expected, there are any number of people offering to do all this for you.
At least you would likely get more sense out of them than the Planning Dept.
My apologies.
"You will need to sign a legal agreement with a responsible body or local authority. The legal agreement will set out how you will create, enhance, maintain and monitor the biodiversity of your registered units to deliver off-site biodiversity net gain. It must last for a minimum of 30 years."
"Monitoring delivery of BNG sits with whoever has made the legal agreement with the landowner/manager to secure delivery of the habitat, i.e. a LPA for planning obligations and conditions or the responsible body for conservation covenants. Advice on monitoring BNG through the planning process is provided in Paragraph: 006 Reference ID: 74-006-2023 of the BNG PPG and there is a section on BNG monitoring in Defra’s guidance for LPAs. Our BNG in Development Management Toolkit provides an overview of the various scenarios for securing BNG and what role we think the LPA has in monitoring and enforcement for each of these."
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