Joining Rachael Forsyth on this week's HortWeek Podcast is John Durnell from the Hampshire Wildlife Trust and Alistair Emery, founder of Land and property investment and consultancy, Kingwell.
John and Alistair are collaborators on significant natural capital scheme at Keyhaven near Milford-on-Sea converting degraded arable farming land into "high value wildlife site".
Kingwell bought the farm in 2020 and is working with Hampshire Wildlife Trusts to create meadows and grassland, enriching the biodiversity as large-scale BNG habitat.
The land will be transformed in five or six phases which will be offered to developers as BNG credits - "we thought was probably what the market would absorb" Alistair says.
Working alongside local authorities and the Environment Agency in a form of public-private partnership HWT will provide technical support on habitat creation and ongoing management of the land over the next 20 or 30 years. As John says, "frankly if we're going to turn around the sort of fate of wildlife in the UK I think every single sector is really going to have to do its bit and I think this is a really nice model for you know not just locally but nationally where we all work together in the same direction to try and restore nature and deal with some of the other environmental impacts."
Alistair talks about the benefits from a land owner's point of view and how it can benefit rural business and community as well as the environment: "Farmers are under a lot of pressure to look at how they can diversify and commercialize their farms, particularly with BPS falling away. It's looking at what are the opportunities that can keep farms going. Environmental schemes such as this are going to play a part in enabling farmers to continue."
They outline the carbon sequestration benefits of soil restoration and way the "nascent" BNG credits market will interact with local construction schemes and planning departments.
Alistair says: "Our planning system is broken. And it's not broken because of things like BNG. It's it's other factors that are driving that.
"Also in the planning system, developers are finding ways to get around BNG, finding exemptions so that they don't have to deliver it onsite or even offsite.
"I think things will change. It's a very new thing. It was only February last year that it became statutory and small developments in April. It takes a long time to get these schemes approved and over the line and supply."
John says: "What I always find frustrating is when the Government infer that lack of supply or BNG or protection for the environment is the thing that's stopping house building. And frankly, that's risible when... if you speak to most developers, they'll admit that it's high interest rates, lack of planning officers, lack of capacity...So there's a lot of reasons that house building is struggling to move forward, including things like lack of labour.
"And certainly the private sector are willing to invest substantial amounts of time and money, which Al's done and the NGO sector is doing, to develop answers and solutions. So it's frustrating when you do that and then you're hearing that the government are looking to abolish, undermine or fundamentally change the way the market works because it's really, really tricky to move forward in that sort of environment."
They discuss the teething troubles with BNG, issues with planning and posit options on how system might be adapted to allow the various agencies to work together more effectively, which means, John insists, public and private partnerships.
John says, "It's all so unclear. And I think there is this danger that - and governments always have this inclination to sort of centralise and want to control things - you see an effective sort of nationalisation of the delivery of these type of schemes. And I'll be honest, I've worked in conservation now for 30 years. Local authorities and government bodies are not very agile. They're not very good at getting schemes up and running."
They also make the case for larger schemes. Alistair says: "If you have on-site mitigation where you've got fragmented patches of areas within developments that are completely unconnected and going back to the resource problem of the local authorities, then being able to monitor and enforce to ensure that the biodiversity is actually being delivered in those areas, it just doesn't work. It will only work properly if we can do it strategically on large areas of land like what we've got in Keyhaven.
John adds: "Small areas suffer from this thing called edge effect where the edges, problems come in from the edge and the edges tend to be degraded to a certain extent....mitigating at scale strategically is a really, really good model. "
Podcast presenter: HortWeek senior reporter Rachael Forsyth
Podcast producer: HortWeek digital content manager, Christina Taylor
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