Local Nature Recovery Strategies and their planning weight

A Local Nature Recovery Strategy is not a development plan document, so it carries no section 38(6) primacy, and an application does not fail because it sits outside a priority area. What a local nature recovery strategy does instead is change the arithmetic. Habitat created in a location the strategy has identified earns more biodiversity units than the same habitat created somewhere the strategy has not, because the statutory metric applies a strategic significance uplift to it. For anyone scoping off-site gain, that single mechanism is worth more attention than the policy wording around it.

What the Environment Act 2021 requires

Part 6 of the Environment Act 2021 requires a strategy to be prepared and published for each strategy area in England, by a responsible authority appointed by the Secretary of State. Responsible authorities are county councils, unitary authorities, National Park authorities and, in London, the Greater London Authority, and the strategy areas between them cover the whole of England.

The Act sets out what each strategy must contain, requires the responsible authority to consult, and requires Natural England and the relevant authorities to support the process. It also requires strategies to be reviewed and republished from time to time, so a strategy is a live document rather than a fixed one.

Two things follow for a practitioner. Each area has one strategy and one responsible authority, which may not be the local planning authority determining your application. And the boundaries of strategy areas follow upper-tier geography, so a scheme near a district boundary may sit close to a different strategy with different priorities.

What a strategy contains

Two components, and they do different jobs.

The statement of biodiversity priorities describes the strategy area, its biodiversity and the opportunities for recovering or enhancing it, sets out the priorities, and identifies potential measures for achieving them. It is written text with maps supporting it, and it is where the reasoning lives.

The local habitat map shows national conservation sites and nature reserves in the area, other areas that are of particular importance for biodiversity, and areas that could become of particular importance if the right measures were taken. That second category is the operative one. It is the map layer that tells you where habitat creation is strategically significant.

Read both. A map polygon without the accompanying priority text tells you where, but not what, and a proposal that creates species-poor grassland inside a polygon identified for wetland restoration will not convince an ecologist reviewing it.

Strategic significance in the biodiversity metric

The statutory biodiversity metric multiplies habitat units by a strategic significance factor that depends on location.

The highest factor applies where the location is formally identified in a local strategy as a priority for habitat creation or enhancement. A middle factor applies where the location is ecologically desirable but not so identified. The base factor applies otherwise. Check the current version of the statutory metric and its user guide on gov.uk for the exact figures, because the metric has been revised more than once and the numbers should be taken from the version in force when the calculation is done.

The practical effect is that the same hectare of created habitat produces a different number of units depending on where it is. On a scheme where off-site units are being bought, that changes the price and the area needed. On a scheme delivering gain on site, it can be the difference between meeting the 10 per cent requirement within the red line and having to go off site at all.

The metric must be completed by a competent person under the Environment Act 2021 regime, and the biodiversity gain plan is approved by the local planning authority after permission. A Biodiversity Net Gain Assessment drafted with AI assistance is a starting point for that competent person rather than a replacement for their judgement.

The strengthened duty on public authorities

Section 40 of the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006 originally required public authorities to have regard to conserving biodiversity in exercising their functions. The Environment Act 2021 strengthened it.

The amended duty requires public authorities to consider what action they can properly take to further the conservation and enhancement of biodiversity, to agree policies and objectives, and then to act. It requires them to have regard to any relevant local nature recovery strategy, and it brings in reporting obligations. Check gov.uk for the current reporting deadlines and the guidance on how authorities are expected to discharge it.

For a consultant, the duty is an argument rather than a lever. It does not give an applicant a right to anything. But where a council's own committee report is silent on a strategy priority that the scheme delivers, pointing to the duty is a fair way of asking the officer to address it.

How strategies feed into plans and decisions

Plan-making is the main route. National policy expects plans to identify and map components of local wildlife-rich habitats and wider ecological networks, and strategies give plan-makers the evidence to do that. Emerging local plans increasingly cross-refer to the strategy for their area, and once a plan policy does so, the strategy content acquires development plan weight through that policy.

In decision-taking, an adopted strategy is a material consideration. Its weight depends on how specific it is, whether the local plan refers to it, and how directly the proposal engages with a mapped priority. That is a softer position than some consultation responses assert, and it is worth being precise about it in a planning statement rather than overstating the case.

Where a scheme is in a nutrient neutrality catchment, the strategy and the nutrient position interact, because habitat creation may serve both purposes if it is designed to. The background to the catchment requirement is covered in the note on where the nutrient neutrality requirement comes from.

Siting off-site units where they count for more

For developers and land promoters, this is the part that changes behaviour.

1. Establish the strategy area and the responsible authority for the application site.
2. Open the local habitat map and find the nearest polygons identified for creation or enhancement, and read the associated priorities.
3. Ask whether any land you control, or any habitat bank offering units, sits inside one.
4. Compare the unit price and the area required for an in-strategy site against an out-of-strategy site, including the multiplier.
5. Check the spatial risk multiplier as well, since units delivered outside the local planning authority area or the national character area are discounted.
6. Record the reasoning in the biodiversity gain plan, because the council will ask why that location was chosen.

Habitat bank operators already target strategy priority areas for exactly this reason. A landowner with land inside a priority polygon holds something more valuable than a neighbour outside it, and the difference is visible in unit pricing.

On-site design benefits too. Where a scheme can create the habitat type the strategy asks for, a Green Infrastructure Plan that explains the link between the landscape design and the mapped priority reads much better than one that lists plant species.

Checking whether your area has one

Strategies have been published in stages across England rather than all at once, and republication cycles mean the version you downloaded last year may not be current.

Check three places. The responsible authority's own website, which is where the adopted statement and habitat map are published. The gov.uk guidance pages on local nature recovery strategies, which explain the process and link to national material. And planning.data.gov.uk, which holds planning-related datasets and is worth checking for a machine-readable version of the mapping.

Record the version and date you used in your assessment. Strategies are reviewed, priorities change, and a metric calculation that cites an outdated map is an easy point for an objector to take. Keep the extract you relied on as an appendix. You can follow reform of this kind through the planning law timeline.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional 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.