BNG has been in effect across all Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) for a year following its introduction nationally on the 12th February 2024 to cover major developments in all LPAs in England. It was expanded in April 2024 to include small sites. As of November 2025, BNG will also include Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects.
Approximately 75% of non-householder planning applications have claimed exemption from BNG on the grounds that they are self-build or custom build projects.
A lot of vendors seem to have high price expectations of over £20,000 per unit.
However, some vendors have decided that, at least initially, they will lower their expectations to below £20,000 to cover the initial set up costs of creating their Habitat Bank.
When discussing price per unit the impact of spatial weighting needs to be considered. To compensate for the biodiversity offset being further from the development site, a discount of 0.75 is applied to units from adjacent LPAs or National Character Areas (NCAs), a discount of 0.5 is applied to units from non-adjacent LPAs or NCAs.
This means that for those vendors setting a minimum price per unit of £20,000, purchasers need to be willing to pay £26,700 per unit in adjoining areas, or £40,000 per unit for those supplied from further afield.
Due to the high cost associated with securing BNG, some developers have redesigned their site layouts to include more on-site mitigation. This, we believe, will change with the price per unit coming down making it more economical to buy offsite units and additionally avoid the complications and liability associated with unstainable on-site mitigation.
We have seen demand range from 0.01 to 33 units; however, most requirements fall to the lower end of this range.
- 9% of the enquiries we receive are for lot sizes below 10 units
- The overall average size of enquiries is for 9.667 units.
- 34% of all enquiries are for lot sizes of 1 unit or below.
- The units required so far have been split across six broad habitat types.
- 19% of enquiries have had a requirement for grassland units, and the most frequent compensation requirement is for medium distinctiveness or greater.
As of the 12th February 2025, the Natural England (NE) Register had 43 sites covering 33 LPAs and 34 NCAs. This means that fewer than 10% of the 337 LPAs and 22% of the 159 NCAs in England have Habitat Banks. Consequently, to secure off-site BNG units, Purchasers are having to use units which will be subject to spatial weighting. Most of our sales are not to developers in the same LPAs or NCAs.
There is increasing demand for BNG units, however, most of this is for developments that have not yet been granted planning permission. Similarly, there are many BNG Habitat Banks in development that are not yet on the NE Register. Therefore, a high percentage of our sales involve a conditional contract. This benefits both parties but more so the developer as these ‘unready’ units are usually sold at a discount and enables the developer to satisfy pre-planning permission enquires with from their LPAs.
We have seen some reasonably sized lots sell as low as £16,000 per unit. We sell by private treaty and by tender at our regular National Sales.