General Advice

Tonbridge & Malling’s BNG level is set at 10%.

The NPPF states: "applicants are encouraged to consider biodiversity net gain early in the development process and factor it into site selection and design. Where appropriate, they should discuss the biodiversity net gain requirements for their development upfront with the relevant local planning authority utilising any pre-application advice services offered by them. This could help establish whether development proposals would be subject to biodiversity net gain and, if they are, enable feedback on the proposed strategy for achieving the biodiversity gain objective and consideration of the Biodiversity Gain Hierarchy to inform the design of the proposals"

Please note, If you work for the LPA and wish to add additional information, please inform the Joe's Blooms team here.

Tonbridge & Malling’s pre-application advice service can be found here.

Tonbridge & Malling is part of the Kent and Medway Local Nature Recovery Strategy. Information can be found here.

Specific BNG requirements are set out in Policy 1.1 of the BNG Policy.

Biodiversity net gain (BNG) is an approach to development, and/or land management, that aims to leave the natural environment in a measurably better state than it was beforehand. The Environment Act 2021 requires that all major development in England (with a few exemptions) deliver at least 10% biodiversity net gain from 12th February 2024. BNG will be required for small sites from 2nd April 2024. BNG must be measured using the relevant DEFRA Statutory Metric and habitats must be secured for at least 30 years. The metric is a Microsoft Excel-based tool and therefore requires Excel to operate. TMBC require a working version of the Metric to be submitted in Excel format for officer use, as well as a PDF copy which will be uploaded to the public domain. Guidance for developers and land managers is available here.

See also the Local Plan.

Specific Strategic Significance requirements are set out in Policy 6.3 of the BNG Policy.

The Strategic Significance multiplier is a score that describes the local significance of the habitat based on its location and the habitat type. Strategic significance helps to incentivise the creation and enhancement of the right habitat in the right place and the scoring gives additional unit value to habitats that are located in preferred locations for biodiversity and other environmental objectives.