What is BS 8683 - Process for designing and implementing Biodiversity Net Gain about?
Biodiversity (biological diversity) provides humanity with essential amenities such as carbon storage, clean air, and food, plus it contributes to our wellbeing. There’s an urgent need to reverse the current rate of loss of biodiversity.
BS 8683 is a new British Standard that sets out a process for implementing biodiversity net gain (BNG), which is an approach to development and land management that leaves biodiversity in a measurably better state than before.
Who is BS 8683 - Process for designing and implementing Biodiversity Net Gain for?
BS 8683 is aimed at any class or scale of built environment development or land/estate management, users will be:
- Design and pre-construction professionals
- Sub-contractors and clients
- Procurement and contract specialists
- Project managers
- Project ecologists
- Local authority planners
- Quality managers
- EIA coordinators, environment and sustainability managers, landscape architects
Why should you use BS 8683 - Process for designing and implementing Biodiversity Net Gain?
BS 8683 specifies requirements for a process to design and implement biodiversity net gain (BNG) for development projects. It doesn’t cover the actual delivery of BNG, but provides a framework to demonstrate that a project has followed a process based on UK-wide good practice.
BS 8683 provides good practice requirements from design to legacy, providing consistency at every level. It will help users meet UK Government requirements to demonstrate a 10 percent increase in biodiversity on or near development sites in England, and as a linear progressive standard, it allows ease of entry for all organizations, irrespective of the scale of a project.
How will BS 8683 - Process for designing and implementing Biodiversity Net Gain be used?
- Demonstrate delivery of industry good practice
- Give clients, commissioning agencies, and other stakeholders confidence that processes are in place that will help secure voluntary or relevant local planning or contractual requirements relating to biodiversity net gain outcomes
- Ensure that internal processes and procedures are in place to help deliver BNG as stipulated by commissioning agencies, clients, and consenting bodies
- Help evidence the satisfactory discharge of planning conditions or the meeting of appropriate regulatory requirements relating to biodiversity net gain outcomes
- Help differentiate and avoid accusations of ‘greenwash’ that could compromise biodiversity net gain approaches
- Help enhance consistency across projects for organizations running multiple projects, minimizing the risk of error and driving consistency of approach
- Enable planning authorities and clients to specify the consistent delivery of biodiversity net gain processes among developers or contractors operating within their territory or on their behalf
- Add to brand value by demonstrating that the organization delivering to the standard is following an evidenced and credible approach and has robust processes in place
