Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is currently consulting on a biodiversity metric for measuring biodiversity net gain. Following this consultation, the statutory metric will be produced and published by the Secretary of State pursuant to the requirements of the Environment Act 2021. This consultation proposes that the statutory metric (version 4.0) will be based on updates to biodiversity metric 3.1 and the small sites metric. Responses from this consultation will be incorporated into the updates made.
Defra plans to publish the statutory metric (including the small sites metric) in late 2022, which will then give up to a year of use before mandatory biodiversity net gain commences from November 2023 for Town and Country Planning Act 1990 development.
The consultation closes on Tuesday 27 September 2022. For further information and to access the consultation here .