Kent Design Conference: Reflections on BNG

Director Eleanor Trenfield presented at the Kent Design Conference on April 30th, a gathering of built environment professionals passionate about shaping the future of Kent and Medway’s landscapes.

During her presentation, Eleanor reflected on Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) in practice, shedding light on recent experience and advocating for a deeper understanding beyond mere metrics to ensure long-term impact and better quality of design for residents and wildlife. Eleanor raised the point that the metric is leading many sites down the route of creating large areas of simple habitats to achieve maximum scores, not a design that would be sensitive, logical and interesting, using ecotones and thinking of a site in the broader picture of a wider habitat network.

Eleanor highlighted some unintended consequences emerging through the BNG metric, including the pressure to maximise scores by favouring simpler habitats. This trend has led to the fencing off of large areas to create high condition habitat, effectively disconnecting people from nature and encroaching on essential features like drainage basins, which become more engineered and less accessible. Additionally, smaller developments are facing viability challenges, often resulting in disconnected pockets of homogenous habitat that fail to deliver meaningful value on-site.

The presentation sparked valuable discussions on finding better approaches to integrate nature into development sites, paving the way for more in-depth exploration and collaboration and we are exploring opportunities to discuss this in more depth. Updates to follow…