Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) is a way of creating and improving natural habitats by ensuring that development has a measurably positive impact (‘net gain’) on biodiversity, compared to what was there before development.
The Kent Wildlife Trust Planning team work closely with the planning teams at Kent County Council and will continue to object – where required – to highlight bad planning applications, whilst working with local planning authorities, developers and partners in the Kent Nature Partnership to make sure that BNG is delivered within an effective and a joined up local policy framework that puts nature first.
Our Consultancy team will work with those developers who pass our due diligence processes to develop BNG plans that have the best chance of driving real gains for wildlife – working in a mission consistent way with Kent Wildlife Trust and investing profits back into nature conservation.
Our Land Management team will then be able to take on long-term management of any additional land that we can bring into conservation management as offsets are created.
Meanwhile, our Advocacy team – working in conjunction with other Wildlife Trusts – challenge whether the overall level of housing being proposed in the South East is ecologically feasible and drive best practise planning and development to ensure that nature and wildlife are considered and prioritised as part of the decision making process.
Working as a cross-cutting team we will focus all Biodiversity Net Gain investments into a long-term landscape framework – under the Nature Recovery Network – so that Biodiversity Net Gain contributes to delivering on the principles of making our wildlife habitats bigger, better and more joined up.
