If a Developer has irreplaceable habitats within the project site that suffer losses or deterioration, these fall outside of the biodiversity net gain mechanism. Being deemed to valuable to be compensated for, they cannot be calculated by the biodiversity metric tool and should be removed from the baseline.

Treatment of these habitats must comply with the policy, legislation and regulations in force at that time and bespoke compensation to address specific losses and deterioration agreed with the relevant planning authority.

Likely to be a minority case, but with reference to Irreplaceable Ancient Woodland, Ancient and veteran trees, we are working toward rejuvenating areas of Wood Pasture that link to existing Ancient and Semi-Natural Woodland within the Deciduous Woodland Priority Habitat Inventory.

Thank you to Tim Johns and the N Yorks team for hosting a very useful briefing at Skipton Auction Mart yesterday. Good to see adjoining LPAs gearing up for their stategies which are designed from the outset with porous borders to be responsive to and interact with their neighbours strategies.

At the same time as BNG became mandatory, the Registry opened with a little less fanfare. However, I've begun the process of lodging our client's sites and hoping we can get the s.106 agreements ironed out over the next few days to support this process.

I can tell final preparations are feverishly underway within the various LPAs across the contry in readiness for the madatory date of 12 February. Also, work is well underway on the Local Nature Recovery Strategies. If all goes well, could be exciting times for the country's biodiversity.

Only slipped another month, but 12 February 2024 is now the date when BNG will be mandatory for new planning applications for major development made under the Town and Country Planning Act (TCPA) 1990. Major development includes residential developments with 10 or more dwellings, or where the site area is greater than 0.5 hectares. BNG for small sites will have the transition period extended to 2 April 2024.