Turn under-used land into a long-term income

Most development in England now has to leave nature measurably better off. The requirement is a 10% uplift in biodiversity value, measured with the statutory metric.

Developers can choose to buy the shortfall as off-site biodiversity units from land elsewhere. If your land can be managed to create or improve habitat, those units are yours to sell.

Yes, throughout. A habitat bank is not a sale and it is not a lease of the land to us. What changes is that the land carries a legal agreement committing it to being managed as habitat for thirty years. You remain the owner.

You can also still sell it. The obligation to manage the habitat bank stays with the land rather than with you personally, so it passes to whoever buys it and carries on to the end of the thirty years.

For BNG, thirty years. That is the statutory minimum.

Nutrient mitigation is usually secured in perpetuity, or for the lifetime of the development it offsets, depending on the catchment and the local authority. Both are long commitments.

Either a section 106 agreement with the local planning authority or a conservation covenant with a designated responsible body. Both run with the land for thirty years and both are enforceable by that authority or body, which is what gives a developer the confidence to buy units from the site in the first place.

Covenants are generally quicker and do not depend on council capacity. A section 106 can be the better route where a particular authority or scheme calls for one. We will advise on which fits your site and your circumstances.

On top of that, before your land can sell BNG units it has to be entered on the biodiversity gain sites register, which Natural England maintains. We take the lead on the whole process, whichever legal route is used.

Land that is working hard for a modest return is usually the best candidate: lower-yielding arable, tired grassland, awkward parcels. What generates the units is the uplift, so a low starting biodiversity score with good potential to improve is worth more than you might expect.

Your least ecologically interesting fields are often your most valuable ones. Existing species-rich habitat generates very little, because there is not much headroom above it, and irreplaceable habitat cannot be traded at all.

Connection to the wider landscape helps, and so does proximity to where development is coming forward.

There is no formal minimum. What decides it is whether the numbers work: the legal, ecological and registration costs are broadly fixed, so a small parcel has to generate enough to carry them.

Smaller sites do work where the habitat is high value or the location is well matched to demand nearby. Send us the boundary and we will tell you whether it stacks up.

Considerably. Units are worth most to developments in the same local planning authority or National Character Area, and developers must purchase more units when they are bought further afield.

Nutrient credits are stricter again, because they only work within the catchment they are generated in. Location is often the single biggest driver of what your land is worth.

In most cases yes, in a modified form. Grazing at lower intensity and hay cuts are both common, and continued agricultural use of the rest of your holding is unaffected.

Habitat management is not abandonment. Many habitat types need active management such as grazing or cutting to reach and hold their target condition.

We design habitat plans around how the farm actually works, rather than handing you a management plan written in isolation.

You can hold SFI, Countryside Stewardship, Environmental Stewardship or Landscape Recovery alongside a habitat bank on the same holding. Defra's condition is that they are on different parcels — or, if on the same parcel, that the scheme payment is for something other than creating, enhancing or maintaining the habitat you are selling units from, such as public access or heritage features.

What you cannot do is sell an enhancement that an agri-environment scheme has already paid for as a biodiversity unit. The additionality rules matter here and they are enforced. Once such an agreement ends you can build further gain on top of it, measured from the baseline that scheme left behind.

Share what you already have in place from the start — existing agreements have a direct impact on which parts of your land are viable.

Well-placed land typically generates between £50,000 and £100,000 per hectare across the thirty years. It is not a single cheque: income arrives as units are sold to developments, so the profile depends on how quickly the units in your bank are taken up.

The figure moves a lot with location and with what habitat the ground can realistically support. Before you commit to anything, we will give you a full report setting out the likely income from your land.

That is a structuring decision, and there is more than one answer. Some landowners want the works and the management costs carried entirely by us, and take a cleaner, lower headline return. Others want to do the management themselves and be paid for it. Both are workable.

What we will not do is leave the long-term cost undefined.

This is an important question, and we have various strategies to mitigate this risk. In short the risk can sit with you, with us, or be shared.

We will consult with you and explain fully about which model we are proposing and what your position looks like in each case.

Manage the habitats to the standards set out in the agreed habitat management plan, and allow the monitoring that the plan requires. The plan itself is developed with your capabilities and your aspirations for the land in mind, so what it asks of you is something you have had a hand in setting. It will be clear what needs doing and when, and we are on hand to help as necessary.

The secured obligation ends and the land is yours to manage.

You can sell. The agreement binds the land rather than you personally, so it passes to the buyer along with the obligation to keep managing the habitat and, depending how the sale is structured, the income that goes with it.

It does affect how the land sells, in both directions. Some buyers value the secured income; others will not want the constraint.

How receipts from BNG and nutrient agreements are treated depends on the structure, your wider holding, and your own position, including how the land is treated for inheritance tax and agricultural relief.

This is case-specific and we do not advise on it. Speak with your accountant or advisor. We will give them whatever detail they require.

In catchments where protected rivers, harbours and estuaries are already over-loaded with nitrogen or phosphorus, new housing cannot proceed unless its additional nutrient load is offset. Land taken out of intensive agricultural use, or managed as wetland and woodland, reduces that load and generates credits developers buy to unlock permission.

It is a separate market to BNG, with its own rules, and the schemes we work on are mostly bespoke. The landowner proposition is similar: a long-term income from a change in land use. There is more on our nutrient mitigation page.

Nothing, and there is no obligation. There is no financial commitment from you in finding out whether your land is suitable, or in setting the habitat bank up. If your land is not suited to it, we will tell you clearly, and will not proceed.

Your financial commitment would typically start at the point of physical work on the land — creating and then managing the agreed habitats. By then you know what the site can generate and what the plan asks of you.

There is a lot of ground to cover in setting up a habitat bank. A few of the key factors are the ecological survey window, which for many species falls in spring or summer; the drafting of the legal agreements; and creating the Habitat Management and Monitoring Plan (HMMP) that the site will be run to.

Realistically it takes six to twelve months to get a site over the line. Using a conservation covenant rather than a section 106 agreement will usually be faster.

A location plan or your field boundaries, the current land use, and any existing schemes or designations you are aware of. That is enough for us to come back with a view.

Get in contact with us and we will take it from there.