Purpose

Bio-diversity Net Gain (BNG) monitoring
fees

Decision

To ensure that the Council has adequate
revenue to monitor BNG, there is, therefore, a requirement to
update the fee outlined in the ‘Gedling Borough Council
Biodiversity Net Gain Guidance (April 2024)’ to better
reflect costs that are likely to be incurred.
To this end, reproduced in appendix 3, is a BNG monitoring fee
calculator. It is based on other similar calculators used in the
country and identifies costs based on the size of the site, maximum
technical difficulty of the habitats to be enhanced/created and the
frequency of monitoring instances set out in the approved Habitat
Management and Monitoring Plan for the site. The costs will be
based on an Ecology Officer rate of £238 per day, with
inflation at 5% and corporate overheads set at 27%. This is
required to ensure that costs for monitoring BNG are appropriately
covered. It is also intended to receive the payment
‘upfront’ given the difficulty in receiving staggered
payments and risks associated with that approach e.g. firms may
cease trading over such a long period, which could leave a
shortfall in revenue that would need to be covered by the Council.
A word summary of the likely costs would be uploaded to the
Council’s web-page and is reproduced in appendix 2.

Reasons for the decision

To ensure that the Council has adequate
revenue to monitor BNG to better reflect costs that are likely to
be incurred

Alternative options considered

The alternative option is for Gedling Borough
Council to continue with the payment identified in the Gedling
Borough Council Biodiversity Net Gain Guidance (April 2024);
however, this would likely result in significant shortfall in
funding to monitor the BNG.