General Advice
Local validation requirements here
Cheshire West and Chester’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.
Pre-Application Advice Service
Cheshire West and Chester’s pre-application advice service can be found here.
Local Nature Recovery Strategy
Cheshire West and Chester is part of the Cheshire Local Nature Recovery Strategy. Information can be found here.
Specific Requirements
Specific BNG Requirements are set out in Policy 1.4 of the BNG Guidance (adopted March 2024).
National Planning Policy Guidance(ii) advises that information on biodiversity impacts should inform all stages of the development process. Ecological surveys or assessments should be proportionate to the nature and scale of development proposed and the likely impact on biodiversity. This note clarifies the interim information requirements for net gain by application type.
See also the Local Plan and the BNG Page.
Strategic Significance
Specific Strategic Significance Requirements are set out in Policy 3.1 of the BNG Guidance (adopted March 2024).
The ‘strategic significance’ column of the metric should relate to whether or not the site falls within the ecological network map and this should be completed. More information on ecological networks is provided at Section 4 'Ecological network' and guidance on the strategic significance aspect of the metric specifically is provided in Appendix B 'Ecological Networks in DEFRA's latest Biodiversity Metric'