Planning Permission: Biodiversity
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether his Department plans to publish a publicly accessible register of biodiversity net gain credit schemes with information on (a) location, (b) pricing and (c) habitat type to support market functionality and planning decisions.
Answered by Mary Creagh
Statutory credits are a last resort way of achieving BNG. They are different from biodiversity units, which are sold in the offsite market. If developers buy statutory credits, this is because it is not possible to restore habitats on-site or units are not available for purchase in the offsite market.
Defra does not intend to maintain a register of schemes in receipt of income from the sale of statutory credits; however the department is required to publish an annual report detailing income received from the sale of Statutory Biodiversity Credits, how that income was spent and (if applicable) the projected biodiversity value of the measures funded by that expenditure. The first annual report is publicly available on gov.uk.
Demand for Statutory Biodiversity Credits has been low, suggesting that the offsite units market is working as intended.
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