The Government has started consulting on the detail of a national biodiversity offsetting scheme designed to ensure developers provide new wildlife sites better than any they are allowed to build on.
This could improve the environment for wildlife as well as simplify the existing planning process, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said.
The administration has said it will only introduce an offsetting system if is satisfied it will improve the delivery of biodiversity planning policy and proves to be quicker, cheaper and more certain for developers and achieve no net loss in biodiversity.
Ministers have stressed that projects should still look to avoid and minimise harm as much as possible before offsetting. This includes accepting that in some circumstances offsetting will not be appropriate in view of the importance of the biodiversity that will be affected or the difficulty of creating similar habitat.
Biodiversity offsetting has already been successful in 25 other countries including the USA, Australia and Germany, explained Defra.
Environment Secretary Owen Paterson said: ‘We want to hear from developer and wildlife groups alike on how we can simplify the existing planning process while enhancing our natural environment.’
At this stage the Government has signalled it favours a ‘permissive’ approach where developers could choose whether to use an offsetting metric to assess their project’s impacts and choose the means of securing compensation (ie by a section 106 agreement or by obtaining an offset).
Other options include a ‘uniform’ approach where developments above a certain threshold would have to use the offsetting metric and obtain an offset.
Also under consideration is a Community Infrastructure Levy-based approach. Under this the local planning authority would purchase offsets to compensate for the overall impact on biodiversity of developments in their area.
The Government has also said it is interested in exploring ways to apply offsetting to protected species.
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