Guidance

Statutory biodiversity metric tools and guides

Tools and guides for measuring the biodiversity value of habitat for biodiversity net gain (BNG).

From:
Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs
Published
29 November 2023

Applies to England

Documents

Statutory biodiversity metric: draft user guide

PDF, 1.8 MB, 74 pages

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Statutory biodiversity metric calculation tool (macro enabled)

4.11 MB

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Statutory biodiversity metric calculation tool (macro disabled)

MS Excel Spreadsheet, 4.04 MB

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Small sites metric (statutory biodiversity metric): draft user guide

PDF, 808 KB, 56 pages

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Small sites metric (statutory biodiversity metric): calculation tool

880 KB

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Statutory biodiversity metric condition assessments

MS Excel Spreadsheet, 377 KB

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Details

The tools and guides on this page explain what will apply when BNG becomes mandatory. Guidance will continue to be updated.

The statutory biodiversity metric tool and user guide

The tool allows the calculation of biodiversity value for the purpose of BNG for major developments.  The user guide has the information needed to use the statutory biodiversity metric tool.  

Statutory biodiversity metric condition assessments

These provide condition assessment criteria for all relevant metric habitats. This allows a standard approach to collecting and inputting the correct data for habitat condition.  

Small sites statutory biodiversity metric calculation tool and user guide 

The small sites biodiversity metric tool allows the calculation of biodiversity value for the purpose of BNG for small sites.  The user guide provides all the information needed to use the small sites biodiversity metric tool. 

Moving from older versions of the biodiversity metric

Guidance on how to copy over from previous versions of the biodiversity metric and the changes since 4.0 will be published in due course.  

Find more tools, case studies and technical detail available from Natural England.

Published 29 November 2023