A Practical Approach to BNG and Environmental Assessment with Hayley Farnell

Today, Paul talks to Hayley Farnell, director of Samsara Ecology and an ecologist with 20+ years of experience. They discuss the best ways for developers to conduct environmental studies, meeting the challenge of Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG), offsite habitat creation, brownfield site assessment and open mosaic habitats. Hayley also explains how to reach the point where you can still legally build while protecting any bats, newts or badgers you have on site.

• KEY TAKEAWAYS
  Do not touch the site and get it environmentally assessed immediately. This enables you to plan ahead, prevent delays, reduces costs and makes BNG easier.
• Breaking protection laws often leads to prosecution, a criminal record and your profits being taken from you.
• Having bats, newts or badgers rarely means you can´t develop the site. Hayley explains how to work your way through these situations.
• The idea behind BNG was to create a way for developers to leave the habitat better than when they started.
• A significant % of small sites need to use offsite habitat creation to meet BNG criteria. 
• Most providers of offsite habitat plots offer poor-quality habitats. So, in reality, biodiversity net gains are not always achieved.
• Assessors, ecologists, councils and developers need to work together to improve BNG.

BEST MOMENTS
“You've been talking in a no-bullsh**t way about some of the problems around BNG.”
“As long as things are done right, most of the time, things can be moved.”
“It's all bonkers, really.”

EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hfarnell
ABOUT THE HOST 
Paul Higgs is a Chartered Planning and Development Surveyor with 40+ years' experience in land, planning and development and a 100% success track record in winning planning consents.
Paul undertook his first refurb project when he was just 17 and then worked his way up from labouring on building sites to becoming Head of Land for renowned plc housebuilder, Barratt Developments. He managed to escape the corporate world in 2002 to set up what is now a multimillion-pound award-winning property development company, Millbank Group. 
In 2013 Paul founded the Millbank Land Academy, the UK’s first training company dedicated to property development; to teach established and aspiring developers the insider secrets the big housebuilders don’t want you to know! 
Paul is also a founding investor and former board director of the industry-leading PropTech Co, LandTech, and has lectured on Advanced Development Valuations on the MSc Property Development at London South Bank University.
 
CONTACT METHOD
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-higgs
Millbank Land Academy: https://www.millbanklandacademy.co.uk
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/paulhiggsofficial
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@InsidePropertyDevelopment