Skip to main content

Podcast episode 138: The BNG

Episode 138 of the podcast is available now via this link or from iTunes and Spotify .

Over a year on from it becoming mandatory, what is to be made of BNG?

On the one hand, according to an open letter signed by a 40-strong coalition of housebuilders and environmental groups to mark the first anniversary, “BNG is a true success story. Over the past year, it has unlocked unprecedented investment in local habitats, while also driving green growth.”

On the other hand, only a tenth of respondents to Planning’s consultants survey believed that the system is working well, perhaps because, according to the HBF, nearly 40% of local planning authorities do not have access to in-house ecological expertise.

What is really going on..?

To find out, I invited five experts in in this, ahem, field to talk about what, in their view, is working well, or at least as expected; what is not working well, or at least not as expected; and what, if anything, needs to change.


They talked about small sites, exemptions, metrics and matrices, management companies, phased development, going above the mandatory 10%, Local Nature Recovery Strategies and the proposed Nature Restoration Fund.



Comments

  1. Amita Patel23 November 2025 at 08:36

    Looking for reliable powder coating guns in West Midlands? Get top-quality equipment, superior finish results, and affordable pricing. Enquire today!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Life on the Front Line

I like it when people get in touch with me to suggest topics for 50 Shades of Planning Podcast episodes because, firstly, it means that people are listening to it and also, and most importantly, it means I do not have to come up with ideas myself. I found this message from a team leader at a local authority striking and sobering though. In a subsequent conversation the person that sent this confided in me that their team is virtually in crisis mode. It is probably fair to say that the planning system is in crisis, but then it is also probably fair to say that the planning system is always in crisis… There is, of course, the issue of resources. Whilst according to a Planning magazine survey slightly more LPAs are predicting growth in planning department budgets (25%) rather than a contraction (22%), this has to be seen in the context of a 38% real-terms fall in net current expenditure on planning functions between 2010–11 and 2017–18. Beyond resources though the current crisis feels m...
136 comments
Read more

50 Shades of Planning T-Shirts!

If you have listened to Episode 45 of the 50 Shades of Planning Podcast you will have heard Clive Betts say that... 'In the Netherlands planning is seen as part of the solution. In the UK, too often, planning is seen as part of the problem'. I said in reply that that would look good on a t-shirt so I have made a few and it does! They are available in black or white (in S, M and L sizes) and are £15 if there is a chance that I'll be able to deliver one to you or £20 if you will need it posting. Please email samstafford@hotmail.com if you would like one. Planning might not be black and white, but the 50 Shades t-shirts are...
112 comments
Read more

YIMBYs and NIMBYs. Is planning becoming a new front in the culture war?

Prepare the barricades, fellow planners; dig out a shelter at the bottom of your garden (if you are lucky enough to have a garden…); and stock up on tins of non-perishable food. There might be a culture war coming and a good planner always spots trouble before it arrives... Given broader cultural, media and political trends it was perhaps only a matter of time before the built environment was subject to the same us versus them, progressive versus regressive factionalism that mars other aspects of public policy and debate. Twitter, of course, is not representative of public opinion, but it can be representative of the cultural, media and political influencers that are shaping it and I spotted this image on there recently. As far as I could tell it was a Brit that posted it and so it is not one of those unseemly intellectual skirmishes breezily dismissed as something our crazy, madcap cousins on the other side of the Atlantic occupy themselves with. Stereotypes are sometimes funny and so...
45 comments
Read more