Finding the Local Nature Recovery Strategy habitat map

The Local Nature Recovery Strategy covering your site is published by a responsible authority appointed for that area, and the document you need is the local habitat map that sits alongside the statement of biodiversity priorities. England is divided into 48 strategy areas, each with one responsible authority, so the first job is identifying which one covers your land.

You need this because the statutory biodiversity metric applies a strategic significance multiplier to habitat units, and whether your site or your proposed habitat falls inside an area identified in the strategy changes the number of units you gain or lose.

Who is responsible for the strategy covering your site

Responsible authorities were appointed by government and are usually county councils, unitary authorities, combined authorities, National Park authorities or, in London, the Greater London Authority. The strategy area does not always match the district you apply to, which is the first thing that trips people up on a site near an administrative boundary.

Start from the government guidance page for Local Nature Recovery Strategies, which lists the strategy areas and the responsible authority for each. Match your site to the area, then go to that authority's website rather than to your local planning authority's, unless they happen to be the same body.

Where your district council is not the responsible authority, its ecologist will still be the person assessing your biodiversity evidence. Ask them which strategy they apply and whether they have any supplementary local mapping, because some authorities hold their own habitat data alongside the strategy.

Where the strategy and the map are published

The strategy has two statutory components under the Environment Act 2021: a statement of biodiversity priorities and a local habitat map. Both are published by the responsible authority, usually as a landing page with a downloadable document and a web map viewer.

What you are looking for on the map is two categories of land. Areas of particular importance for biodiversity, which are typically existing designated sites, priority habitat and the best of the local resource. And areas that could become of particular importance, which is where the strategy proposes that habitat creation or enhancement would do the most good.

Some responsible authorities publish the underlying spatial data as a downloadable layer or through a mapping service, which is more useful than a screenshot if you or your ecologist are working in a geographic information system. Ask if it is not obvious from the page.

Do not confuse the strategy map with the national habitat inventories. Those show what is recorded on the ground and are a different input to your assessment, as our note on reading habitat inventories explains.

Reading the priorities alongside the map

The map on its own is half the document. The statement of biodiversity priorities explains what the strategy is trying to achieve in each area, and it is the part that tells you which habitat type to create.

Read the two together and you get a specific answer. A mapped area whose stated priority is wetland creation along a river corridor is telling you that a wet grassland or reedbed proposal will attract high strategic significance, and that an orchard in the same parcel probably will not. Creating the wrong habitat in the right place does not automatically earn the uplift.

This matters most for off-site provision. If you are buying units or creating habitat on land you own elsewhere, the strategy tells you where that land needs to be and what needs to happen on it.

Checking publication status before you rely on it

Not every strategy is at the same stage. Some are published in final form, some are in consultation, and some have published a draft habitat map ahead of the full document.

Check the status on the responsible authority's page and note it. A draft map is still useful evidence and still informs the design, but describe it as a draft in your assessment rather than presenting it as adopted. Where nothing is published for your area, the metric guidance explains how strategic significance is determined from other sources, which in practice means the development plan, any local nature recovery network mapping and other adopted local strategies.

Ask the authority's ecologist what they are using in the interim. Getting that answer in writing before the metric is completed avoids an argument at validation.

Recording the version you used

Strategies will be reviewed and republished, and metric versions change too. A biodiversity assessment that cannot say which version of which document it relied on is difficult to defend six months later.

Record all of the following in the assessment, not in an email.

• The name of the strategy and the responsible authority.
• The publication or draft status and the date of the version consulted.
• The date you accessed it.
• A map extract showing the site boundary against the strategy mapping, with a north arrow and a scale.
• The strategic significance category you assigned to each parcel, and the reason.

The same discipline applies to the metric file itself, as our note on downloading the biodiversity metric sets out. Mismatched versions between the metric, the strategy and the ecological report are one of the most common reasons a biodiversity gain plan is queried.

Where the boundary is ambiguous

Strategy mapping is drawn at a strategic scale. On a small site the boundary of a mapped area can pass straight through the plot, and the map was never intended to be read at that resolution.

Three practical responses.

1. Overlay the mapping on a licensed base at a scale you can defend, and show the site boundary accurately rather than approximately.
2. Where a parcel is partly inside, assign strategic significance parcel by parcel and explain the split in the assessment rather than rounding the whole site one way.
3. Ask the responsible authority or the local planning authority's ecologist for a written view, and attach the reply.

Resist the temptation to resolve every ambiguity in your own favour. A metric that assigns high strategic significance to every parcel on a marginal reading is the kind of thing that triggers a detailed review of the whole submission.

Using the result in the metric

Strategic significance enters the statutory metric as a multiplier applied to habitat units. High significance carries the largest uplift, medium a smaller one, and low applies no uplift at all. Check the multipliers in the version of the metric you are using rather than relying on a figure quoted anywhere else, because they are published with the tool and can change between versions.

The practical effect on a small residential scheme is real but bounded. It will not rescue a scheme that is losing high distinctiveness habitat. It can make the difference between needing a small off-site contribution and meeting the gain requirement on site, which on a site of five to nine units is the difference between a straightforward biodiversity gain plan and a hunt for units.

Two things follow. Do the strategy check at the feasibility stage, before the layout is set, so that the landscape design can be steered towards the habitat the strategy asks for. And commission the Preliminary Ecological Appraisal early enough that the baseline habitat classification is settled before the metric is run.

A Biodiversity Net Gain Assessment under the Environment Act 2021 regime expects the statutory metric to be completed by a competent person, and the biodiversity gain plan has to be approved by the local planning authority. An AI-assisted draft can set out the structure and the policy framework, and the metric itself and the ecological judgement behind it need that competent person.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Strategy publication status, metric versions and local practice all change, so check the current position with the responsible authority and your local planning authority before relying on it. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.

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