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Okay, good morning everyone, my name is Councillor Smart and I am the vice chair of this committee. I would like to welcome you all to the Chemistry Council's planning committee meeting taking place at 10 a.m. on 24th of April. Other members of this committee, I'd like to introduce themselves. Katie Thumber, Peter Sfield. Robert Dryden, Cherry Hinton. Sam Carlin from West Chesterton. Merri Bennett, Abbey Ward. Katie Pora, market ward. David Levine, Trumpington Ward. Thanks, Councillors. Officers permit a table for this meeting are delivery manager, Toby Williams, legal advisor, Keith Barber, committee manager, James Goddard, and producer, Chris Conner. Other officers and public speakers will join us throughout the course of the meeting. I will introduce them at the start of relevant agenda items. I have to keep him. The copies of the agenda can be found on the seats to the right of the dias. Copies are also available on the City Council's website under committee meetings, minutes, and agendas. Please try and refer to specific page numbers within the agenda if you are referring to a specific paragraph or plan. And I remind all of those present of the importance of using the microphones at all times when speaking. Please speak close to and clearly into the microphone. Please ensure you are switched off or silenced any other devices you have so they do not interrupt proceedings. When you are invited to address the meeting, please make sure your microphone is switched on. When you finish addressing the meeting, please turn off your microphone immediately. Speak slowly and clearly and please do not talk over or interrupt anyone. If anyone has any problems hearing me throughout the meeting, please alert me by waving their hands or advising a Council officer. We aim to take a 45-minute lunch break between noon and 2pm. Please connect with President in the Council Chamber and notice that everything on your desk, including your laptop screen is likely to be broadcast at some point. The camera follows the microphone being switched on so Councillors and officers are requested to wait a couple of seconds before speaking to allow the camera to catch up. Please raise your hand if you wish to speak. Please can there's participating in the meeting via a live stream indicate you wish to speak via the chat column or raised hand option. Please do not use the chat column for any other purpose. The meeting chat is neither confidential nor private and can be subject to an FOI or DPA request. That's freedom of information or data protection act requests. Make sure that your device is fully charged and that you switch your microphone off unless you are invited to speak. Please use a headset if available when speaking and hold the microphone close to your mouth. Could public speakers turn their cameras off until we come to the application we have registered you to speak about? If a report officer drops out from the committee to support broadband signal, the senior officer present will take over their presentation or report and respond to questions. The case officer will give a brief introduction to his or her report. Registered public speakers will be invited to have their say. There will be three minutes to those speaking in support and three minutes to those speaking against unless have advised otherwise. The committee manager will ring a bell when you have 30 seconds remaining. Once public speakers have addressed the committee, their speaking time is over. Public speakers are unable to join in with the cancer debate. The committee will then discuss and debate the item and may ask questions in the case officer. At the end of the deliberation, I will ask members to vote on the officer recommendation by a show of hands. The council has a convention for major planning applications known as the adjourned decision protocol where there is a majority resolution that is minded to make the decision. Contrary to the officer recommendation, the decision to determine the application will then be adjourned and the officers will be prepared a further report which will come back to a future meeting of this committee. Only those present in the chamber can vote or propose or second recommendations. For the comfort of councillors and officers in the public, I may choose to recall short breaks during the proceedings. If councillors or officers require a break at any point, please indicate to me that all proceedings are the next convenient opportunity. Moving on to agenda, apologies for us. So I see you're all here at sir, councilor Beige, and he is coming later because we have a briefing to start with. He's already seen. So that's that move on to agenda item three, decorations of interest. Anybody? Thank you, Chair. Just a note for item seven, Brookmounts Court. I realise my partner used to work in this building several years ago, but the company was just ready to get had no financial interest and I've not had any prior discussion, but just to declare my discretion is unfettered. Thank you. Thank you, councillor. Okay. So agenda item four minutes. I've got the minutes of the meeting or sixth of March. Can I sign this as a true record? Yes. Thank you very much. Okay. So moving on to agenda item five. As you may know, councillors, we have a briefing before we start planning items. So item five is updates on biodiversity net game. Are you ready? Thank you very much, Chair, the board members. I will now give a brief presentation on biodiversity net game. I'm the natural environment team leader for Greta Cambridge. Today I have with me my manager, Jane Green, and online. We have two ecologists. Guy Bulcher from the city and Daniel Weaver from South Cairns, to share my screen. I believe you can all see the screen. So biodiversity net game. I suppose the first question is what is it? But obviously net gains a new approach to planning and development that seeks to enhance the natural environment as a function of development. Rather than simply replacing what is lost as a function of any development, biodiversity net gain seeks to go further. And seeks to it's about stepping beyond into conservation of the natural environment said rather than simply putting back what is what is lost through development. If why is it important? Well, if we look at a credit Cambridge city of Cambridge, then the middle, the district of South came to around the edge. You can see the kinds of development pressures that we have. We live in a very nature depleted part of the country, the county of Cambridge. The district of South Cambridges is very, very low in terms of the amount of land managed for nature. And combining with that, we have a lot of development pressure. And so we have a perfect storm in a way of not much land managed for nature, high development pressure. And so we have a need really to protect and enhance the biodiversity that we have. But on the screen, there are just some points there. We've got water beach in the north, north stove to the west. We've got Campbell West, Campbell and then of course around the Cambridge Fringe. There's an awful lot of development taking place. If we were to look at this map in a slightly different way and look at the spatial footprints of these developments, you can see that they're quite considerable. So there's a lot of managed land going under development and therefore we really need to have good policies in place to ensure that that biodiversity is not lost but enhanced. The kinds of development we're all familiar with are the city of Cambridge. This I think is opposite the station, the station road. We have an urban fringe development. This is Edington to the west of Cambridge. I think predominantly a greenfield site when it came forward. And of course we have the new towns, as I said, such as Campbell, not quite new, about 30 years old, but certainly north stove and water beach. And so different types of development offering different challenges when it comes to protecting and enhancing any biodiversity that's lost. And when we think about, but obviously in that game or BNG as we could call it, we're thinking about replacing that lost habitat three different types. I think about on site, I believe this is a picture of Edington in the west and the kinds of net gain we can achieve on site, somewhat limited. And as much as you'll have, I think this is a pollinator corridor, so you've got a green corridor running through urban development. And obviously that's a forming part of the green infrastructure as well. It's important to say that the quality landscaping and the green infrastructure that you'll imagine is part of any good development within this site will include elements like this. So that's on site. We should also think about off site, because not all developments will allow us to deliver biodiversity net gain on site. I think it's important to say a couple of things. This is within the city for landscaping. And I could rule them off. I probably shouldn't rule them off, but you have a number of policies that ensure your green space is protected within the city of Cambridge. That's the first thing to say. The second thing, and we'll get to the measurement of BNG later, but the way that the calculation works is that the further that you go from the site of that development in terms of delivering your biodiversity net gain, the more penalties you accrue. And so it makes sense to get your net gain as close to the site of the development as possible. But we will entertain off site because sometimes there's just a need to develop off site. And then, of course, there's a combination where some of your net gain can be delivered on site, possibly through the pollinator corridors that you've seen, but some of it can go off site into different places and enhance the natural environment in strategic locations. So strategic locations are places where we lost the feed to the big screen. There are sites which have been identified typically within the district, which can include a habitat banking element. You've simply losing the, have you got that? Okay. I'm afraid it may be the Wi-Fi. We do have an HDMI lead, so we can show it in the room, but it may not be off. But we can show in the room. Persevere for the minute, because I presume we've got residents watching. Yes, absolutely. I have. Okay, I'll carry on my presentation. We'll try it for a minute, it's too long. If not, we can essentially change the HMDI. So habitat banking for off site mitigation is an approach which seeks to create advanced habitats in strategic locations. And those strategic locations are identified as private districts or indeed, perhaps in the city to come forward. Advanced habitat creation seeks to offset habitat loss from development site at a site that's at a distance. By diversity credits sold on those sites are purchased by developers to pay for the creation management monitoring those habitats over a 30 year period. As I've already said, they're strategically located for the best outcomes for nature. What does that mean? That essentially means that they're not just placed anywhere, anywhere we can find a field. These places are ideally, well, they meet certain criteria that ideally more than 40 hectares in size, they may be proximate to existing county wildlife sites, they can act as stepping stones, or they buffer existing wildlife sites. That there's a rhyme and reason as to where they are, where they are. And they create opportunities for businesses to facilitate nature restoration through different partnerships. As I've already said, they must be registered with Natural England on a national database. So this isn't a map, you know, that's something that's very closely monitored by Natural England, so they can't just be set up willy-nilly by anybody. The sites will need to create enhanced habitat and manage monitor over a 30 year period. They should be at least 40 hectares in size of smaller proximate wildlife sites, and should be within habitat prior to where possible. Now, what do I mean by that? These are the handful of sites, we've got about half a dozen already. Either we have Section 106 agreements with these sites already, or those agreements are currently being drawn up. And they're given indication as to where the existing sites are spatially in terms of their proximity to the city of Cambridge. You'll see that predominantly they're in the southeast of the district. There was one out to the west, we haven't quite got that Section 106 together yet with Cambridge past, present and future. But as time goes on, we anticipate there will be more, and in fact, there should be sites within the city of Cambridge at some point. So, they're not all going to be within the district. These are just the early adopters. These are the ones that have come forward first of all. If we look at the Cambridge Data Network map, you can see that, obviously, to the southeast, you've got that blue area. It's the Gold-McGold, Gold-McGogs, excuse me, Hill's priority area, it's predominantly Scotland. And many, so low valley farm, a couple of the wildlife trust sites are within that area, the CPPF site, which I mentioned earlier, is out to the west. And that would be on the boulder clay. And so, again, intention is with these strategic sites that they are located within areas, which have already been identified as priority areas designated for nature restoration. And that will feed into the LNRS, the local nature recovery strategy that will be coming forwards over the next few months. Just a quick visual on biodiversity net gain before we get into the business of how we measure this, because that's a very important piece to imagine. The green blob at the top left is your, let's say, at your green field site, and we plop the development in the middle. In the old model of no net loss, what would happen is we'd say, okay, we've lost that amount of land to development, we're going to simply replace it, hence no net loss. But that model typically didn't work because of various reasons, the way that things were measured was inconsistent. Developers Chocora did not always do what they promised to do, and so invariably, we would end up with a net loss to biodiversity. The new model of biodiversity net gain, following the same approach, have your land, your development is taken, you have your mitigation loss. And then BNG goes beyond that. And what the government have said in the Environment Act, and what's come forward in law over the last two or three months, is that biodiversity net gain shall be set at the minimum of 10% above baseline. And that differs from what was in the National Planning Policy Framework, up until recently it just said net gain. The Environment Act now says it must be at least 10%, and of course, we're very aware that some members have aspirations to go beyond 10% and we're checking the viability of those models at the moment. Broadly speaking, this approach follows what's called the mitigation hierarchy, where at first you try to avoid any damage, that's the first principle, where you can avoid, you avoid, you can't avoid. You minimize the damage you do to the National Environment. The next step is to rectify any damage. Beyond that, reduce, and then finally offsetting. And it's this offsetting piece that biodiversity net gain seeks to achieve, to go beyond just putting back what's been damaged, to offset whether it's onsite, or whether it's offsite, or whether it's a combination of those two to go further and actually begin to enhance the National Environment. I'll hand over to Dan Weaver, who's our principal ecologist, to take you through the NG is measured. Thank you. Good morning, hopefully you can all hear me well. So first and foremost, biodiversity net gain is measured through what we call the, the biodiversity net gain, biodiversity metric, or the small sites metric. These are spreadsheet, Excel spreadsheet based algorithms that have been developed by the Department of Environment and Farming Rural Affairs and Natural England over the past sort of 11, 12 years or so. They use habitat size or habitat length, depending on whether you are looking at say a grassland or a riverbank, we are measured separately. Each of those have to deliver 10% separately as well. We look at things like habitat distinctiveness, how diverse is that habitat, is it immunity grassland, is it wet woodland, they would score differently where woodland obviously scoring higher. What is the condition of those habitats, are they, do they have, you know, unwanted plants within them, do they not have enough plants in them, is there lots of bare ground, how, you know, what condition are those habitats within. And then also what is the strategic significance of those habitats, this is more of a sort of a political strategic multiplier that we can apply through our local plan policy or through the L and RS as it comes through. When looking at creating habitats again, this is, this multiplier depends on how far away your created habitat is, is it within the LPA boundary or the same national character area, is it outside, is it next door, is it one or the other. So there's a couple of different ways those multipliers can work within the app, within the algorithm. Next slide please John. There are of course exemptions from the, from mandatory biodiversity net gain. These look at permitted developments and urgent crown development sites with exclusively sealed surface. Now this basically means that it scores zero in the, in the, in the algorithm and 10% of zero is zero. So they effectively are exempt from, from, from 10% minimum. Impacting areas below the de minimis threshold. So that's 25 square meters of area. So grid of, you know, grassland or woodland or five meters of linear habitats. That's river bank habitat or hetero habitat or three separate measures separately. Household applications are exempt and small scale, self build or custom build houses are also exempt. And we were not given the definition of what small scale was until November this year. Small scale is now nine or below units. And also by diverse net gain sites themselves. So where we are, there is a change of use, for example, well from agricultural land to a by diverse net gain site. Those sites are also technically exempt from biodiversity net gain, although they are obviously providing a very large amount. Next slide please John. We have some, both national and local policy, which has been helping us along the way. So John mentioned the MPPF earlier on this was up until 2018, only relying on no net loss, which again was very difficult to measure. It wasn't really, there was no quantitative way of which that was asked to be measured. And then on 2021 we had the Enviroint Act, which brought forward the mandatory 10% biodiversity net gain, which we are now working with that was sealed in with secondary legislation at the beginning of this year. Locally we have our biodiversity supplementary planning document, which we brought forward jointly between both districts in 2021. We have our developing local plan, which is looking and trying to seek out whether or not that 20% net gain is feasible. And I believe in the city, you also have your biodiversity strategy, which I know guys been working on very hard. Next slide please. And obviously the elected members are very important in this process as well, because you have to look at these applications at planning committee. Now a biodiversity net gain must be a minimum of 10%. Now if it is below 10%, this technically should have been invalidated before the application even came to officers, let alone to planning committee. But there are some exceptions, especially in things like outline applications. So again, it's a little bit of a variation that you must be aware of. We have to check that the mitigation hierarch has been used, that we've looked on site first, really, that all potential biodiversity on site has been found. The smaller the site is, the harder that is going to become, the larger the site, the more public opens, basically easier that becomes. If they do have to provide biodiversity net gain off site, where will it be provided, how will that be secured. And also where they are providing those biodiversity net gain habitats, whether they are realistic and deliverable, whether they are trying to provide high condition, calcareous grassland in the middle of the playing field is not a realistic prospect. So we have to make sure that what is being provided is realistic and can be delivered. Next slide please John. We are then looking at how we secure biodiversity net gain. First and foremost, within the red line boundary, we'd likely to be securing it through a pre-commencement planning condition. So this would require applicants to provide their final biodiversity net gain plans, plus if they are purchasing units from off site, they would have to provide the proof of purchase effectively of those units, the agreement or whatever, to us to make sure that those units have been sought. A second way of doing that would be through a section 106 agreement. We have several section 106 agreements with developers for on-site applications of on-site biodiversity net gain as well. We look for places like Gerten College, or I'm trying to think somewhere else. The Granta Research Park as well have section 106 for within-site biodiversity net gain. We also have off-site biodiversity net gain section 106 agreements with places like Lower Valley Farm. And finally, there is what is called a conservation covenant. This is a mechanism that has been brought forward through the Environment Act, whereas a body, not necessarily an LPA, can become a responsible body through application to Defra, and they will hold the legal agreement for the delivery of biodiversity net gain on that land. So it is like a section 106, but the responsible body does not have to be an LPA. LPA is can apply to become a responsible body, but they don't have to be. It's not a case that you can incorporate a company on a Tuesday and become a responsible body on a Wednesday. You have to show a proven track record of working with nature or working in environmental services to show that you have that application you can do. So there are a few caveats to becoming a responsible body. Next slide, please, John. One of the things we have to look for is how we are going to monitor biodiversity net gain. It must be monitored over a 30-year period to make sure that those habitats have been created in the way that they should be, which means that we have to regularly collect monitoring data for all those sites. Whoever holds the agreement is responsible for monitoring. What we should mention at this point in time is that Natural England will have no enforcement powers on this. They will hold the National Register for off-site biodiversity net gain, but they will have no enforcement. So whoever holds that legal agreement will be the enforcer on those sites. So if things fall foul, we will have to work out how we work through that process. Next slide, please, John. Some of the things that we are considering in the moment is how much we should charge developers or Habitat bank providers for monitoring. We are trying to make sure that we are covering all of our costs, so that any additional resources that are required, whether it's officer time for myself or my team or through enforcement or through planning officers or Section 106 officers, is covered by that fee. How often we need to collect that monitoring data to make sure that the habitats are progressing the right way. And how do we collect that monitoring data? Do we require a PDF from every single provider to be sent to us every year? Or do we find a smarter way of doing that? So these are the questions we are asking ourselves the moment that we are trying to work through. Next slide, please, John. But in essence, by the first thing, it is a very significant new legislation. It does change the game. It does mean that the developers have to assess their biodiversity on site before they make their plans. They have to look on site first. So hopefully this means there is going to be some kind of sea change in the way the development goes forward. And we hopefully get more green sites within development as well. That's the hope. So yeah, thank you very much. I think the last slide is just questions, I think, John. Thank you very much for the presentation. I'm sure it will throw up a few questions. I've said to officers, I want to be done by 11 o'clock at the latest, perhaps, including a short break. So we have received answers. Councillor HONVRAH. Thank you very much, John. I've seen some of this presentation before, but I learn every time I see it. So I've got some questions. So one is, will committee members be able to see how the net game is being delivered? So could we go to, if there is a site for offsite BNG? Can we go and see it early to see where there's very little BNG? And actually to understand how the BNG is invested in this and what's going to happen. So could we maybe do an annual visit? And I also think that the developers might be interested. I know one comment from developers who put money into public artists, where does our money go to? So I think if they're putting, if they're doing this, they'd like to see the benefits of their contributions towards BNG. One site on the map that you've showed, John, was a site, it was a privately owned place. I think it was the south, the furthest southeast. How does that not cause a conflict of interest if it's a private, what does the owner get some benefit from all of this investment? When you choose the offsite locations, do you take into account pesticide use that might be around nearby that's being used in farming that we know has some severe detrimental effects on bees and things like that? So would that be taken into account? We don't want to invest something that might be affected by something around that location? Sorry, there's a lot of questions. And then the other point that I think this committee was raised before was onsite versus offsite. So if there was a site where it was all the investment on BNGs onsite, so the site gains 10% BNG, and then in 20 years it's redeveloped, then all of that additional biodiversity would have to be taken into account for the next development, which would be another 10% on something that's been improved. But if the BNG is all offsite, my understanding is that when the first site is redeveloped in 20 years, that the offsite BNG is excluded from the increase in the BNG. So this is a huge argument for keeping it onsite because it will be a gain on net gain on net gain. So, and finally, what about the soil on the site? We know soil is incredibly important and there's a huge amount of BNG in soil. Is the soil tests done and included in the calculations? Thanks. Okay, thanks, Councillor. That's quite a few questions. I think I'll go back to officers. Just before you answer, Councillor, for Thornborough's questions, can you tell us, especially for residents, what BNG or biodiversity net gain is, so define it, and also can you explain what LPA is, please. Thank you. Apologies there. I thought that was my second slide, but I will try and explain. Yes, I missed it. Sorry. No, no, not at all. I could actually, I can zoom back to the slide. Oh, dear. Lots and lots and lots going on. So, biodiversity net gain is, it is an approach to development that seeks to go further. In the past, when development has taken place, we have sought to, the standard model has been to replace what's been lost. Net gain does essentially what it says on the tin. It intends to gain and therefore go beyond what is lost. So, biodiversity net gain seeks to replace or enhance above what was lost to the baseline as a functional map development. Thanks, John. Sorry I missed it. So, it's like more trees and flowers and plants and things on the site that wasn't there before. Yes. So, just to be absolutely clear. Essentially, we're talking about habitats, and of course, habitats are where our species live. So, the idea is we replace the habitats and therefore provide a home to the birds and the bees and the water vaults and whatever it is that we're trying to replace. And your second question, again, apologies LPA stands for local planning authority. The local planning authority in Greater Cambridge is made up of the city of Cambridge and the district of South Cambridge District Council. That's the LPA. I'll now have a go at your questions. And I might indeed use some of my colleagues here. So, the first couple of questions about members going to sites. Absolutely. We plan this summer to once we've got dates, once we can finalize dates to take any interested members out to these sites. It won't just be lower valley farm. The wildlife trust have have sites out there in the district and others are coming forward. So, we anticipate putting together with the help of colleagues, some day trips, if you like, so you can see what's going on. And of course, what you'll see is very early works and hoping, because we've already been out to lower valley farm, you'll have an explanation of what's going on, how it's going to work, how it's being monitored. Our ecologists will have no doubt come with us and you can have a full explanation. So that's absolutely planned. And of course, your second point about developers. A great idea, I think, wouldn't it be nice if we could indeed bring them along and show them where that money is going to be invested and how it's going to make a material difference to enhancing our local biodiversity. I believe your third question was about private land. So privately owned land. I think providers coming forward, whether it's the county council, whether it's the wildlife trust, whether it's a land owner that happens to have 40 hectares of land. I think the regs are a blind to that. If they're doing the right thing on that land, they're following the regulations, they're undertaking the monitoring, they're providing the local planning for those monitoring reports on an annual basis. It really doesn't matter. In terms of conflict of interest, I would scratch my head on that. I'm not quite sure. There may be clear conflicts of interest in some cases, but if it's someone coming forward with some land, we view that from the perspective of, is it an appropriate location for that biodiversity. Can they create the biodiversity that they're suggesting on that land. I think as Dan said earlier, are they looking to create a chalk grassland on a recreation playing field so so all of those things would be considered. Your next two questions. The first one was pesticides taken into account. And I believe investment on site in 20 years. I'm going to ask our colleges online to take those questions because they could probably make a better job. I'm not sure whether we want to ask Dan or Guy or which, which one of those chaps want to put your hands up. Okay. So, Guy, do you want to take a shot at that question. Thank you, John. Morning Councillors, I'm Guy Bell, which is the vice versa for Cambridge City Council. I work in city services, managing some of our sites, but also give technical advice to the planning service. And Council former on the, probably not in order, but on the soils on site. And they're not specifically looked at. However, all habitats are dependent on soil type and to sort of create a.