Environment Bank has secured eight conservation covenants for BNG sites

These eight sites, created in partnership with local farmers and landowners, cover almost 500 acres (200 hectares) of land which is dedicated to high quality habitat creation and enhancement. That’s around the same area as 250 football pitches, or the entire Olympic Park in London.

At these sites alone, we have generated almost 1,200 off-site Biodiversity Units which are available for developers to reserve and purchase.

Conservation covenants have now been secured for the following: 

• Minting Habitat Bank in Lincolnshire
• Heacham Habitat Bank in West Norfolk
• Martley Habitat Bank in Worcestershire
• Emberton Habitat Bank in Buckinghamshire
• Bolsterstone Habitat Bank in South Yorkshire
• Cornwell Habitat Bank in Oxfordshire
• Two BNG sites at our Horwich Habitat Bank in Greater Manchester

To secure these conservation covenants, we worked with the incredible team at RSK Wilding, a BNG specialist branch of the ecological consultancy RSK Biocensus – one of the first organisations to be appointed by Defra as a Responsible Body with the authority to grant conservation covenants to BNG providers. These sites are also the first sites that RSK Biocensus has successfully completed such legal agreements.

To formally add BNG sites with Units for sale onto the gains sites register, they must be legally secured through either a conservation covenant with a Responsible Body or a section 106 agreement (S106) with the local planning authority (LPA). 

The demand for off-site Biodiversity Units is high. We’ve already received more than £160m worth of enquiries from developers looking to comply with their BNG obligations and we have a national network of 25 Habitat Banks already generating thousands of Biodiversity Units to sell across the country.  

Our first course of action in legally securing our Habitat Banks will always be to pursue a S106 agreement with the LPA to engage as much as possible with local stakeholders. But as BNG is still a new policy and LPAs are awaiting additional resourcing and guidance, we may need to secure conservation covenants in some cases to meet the urgent needs of developers. 

We’re continuing to work closely with LPAs across England, building valuable partnerships and supporting them with BNG and S106 agreements. We also intend to provide ongoing monitoring reports to the local authority for any sites in their area secured under conservation covenants, keeping them in the loop as the Habitat Bank progresses.

Legal agreements coming forward at a timely pace are essential for BNG policy to thrive as intended. Developers are already finding that off-site BNG solutions, like those offered by Environment Bank, are enabling vital development projects to go ahead. 

Biodiversity Units from the Emberton Habitat Bank, now secured under a conservation covenant with RSK Wilding, have been purchased to enable a retirement village development project to progress in Oxfordshire. 

We also recently provided Units from both our Heacham and Emberton Habitat Banks (both now secured through RSK Wilding conservation covenants) to cater for a substantial infrastructure project carried out by National Grid in East Anglia. 

Similarly, Biodiversity Units from our Bolsterstone Habitat Bank, now also secured through this agreement, were recently sold to unlock a social housing development near Sheffield. With social housing in high demand, unlocking BNG solutions with legal agreements is critical in avoiding development delays.