Local nature recovery strategy mapping and your site

If your site sits inside an area the local nature recovery strategy maps as important for biodiversity, or as somewhere that could become important, the habitats you create there score a higher strategic significance multiplier in the statutory biodiversity metric. That is the practical reason a developer should read the strategy covering their site before designing the landscape scheme. The multiplier is modest in isolation and decisive at the margin, where a scheme is a fraction of a unit short of the ten per cent requirement.

The strategies are not development plan documents, and that distinction governs how much weight they carry.

What a local nature recovery strategy contains

The Environment Act 2021 requires local nature recovery strategies to cover the whole of England, each prepared by a responsible authority for a defined area. Two components matter for a planning application.

The first is a statement of biodiversity priorities: what the area is trying to achieve, which habitats and species it is prioritising, and what the main opportunities are. The second is a local habitat map, which identifies areas of particular importance for biodiversity and areas that could become of particular importance if habitat were created or improved.

That second category is the one developers overlook. A field with no designation and no notable habitat can sit inside a mapped opportunity area because the strategy wants a corridor through it. Nothing on the ground tells you. Only the map does.

Checking whether a site falls in a mapped area

Start with the responsible authority for the area, which is the county council, unitary authority, combined authority or, in London, the Greater London Authority. Each publishes its strategy and its local habitat map.

Three checks are worth making together:

1. The local habitat map, for areas of particular importance and opportunity areas, recording the layer name and the date you checked.
2. The published national mapping service, for priority habitat, protected sites and ancient woodland, which the strategy builds on rather than replaces.
3. The adopted local plan and any green infrastructure or biodiversity supplementary planning document, because a site identified in those can also confer high strategic significance.

Screenshot the map extract with the site boundary on it and keep the date. Strategies are reviewed and republished, and the version in force when the application is determined is the one that counts.

Where the site is allocated in the local plan, read the allocation policy alongside the strategy. The two sometimes point in different directions, and the weight question that arises is the one covered in local plan site allocations and their weight.

Effect on the strategic significance multiplier

The statutory metric applies a strategic significance multiplier to each habitat parcel, set at three levels: high, medium and low. High strategic significance applies where the habitat is in a location identified as a priority in the local nature recovery strategy or an equivalent local strategy or plan. Medium applies in locations identified as being of some importance but not a formal priority. Low applies elsewhere.

The multiplier applies to habitat parcels in the post-development and off-site calculations, so it rewards creating the right habitat in the right place. It also applies to baseline habitat, which means that losing a parcel inside a priority area costs more units than losing an identical parcel outside one.

Off-site units carry the same logic. Units bought within the same strategy area, and within a mapped priority area, score better than units bought at a distance, and the spatial risk multiplier compounds that. Where a scheme is short on-site, the location of the off-site provision is worth as much attention as its habitat type.

The weight the strategy carries in decision-taking

A local nature recovery strategy is not part of the development plan. It does not have policies that applications are determined in accordance with, and an officer cannot refuse an application for conflict with it in the way they could for conflict with a local plan policy.

Its weight comes from three places. National policy expects plans and decisions to take account of the strategies. Local plans are expected to reflect them, so a strategy priority often reappears as a plan policy. And public authorities carry a statutory biodiversity duty that requires them to have regard to what they can do to conserve and enhance biodiversity, informed by the strategies.

So it is a material consideration with real influence on the metric and on officer expectations, rather than a policy test. Treat it as something that shapes the design rather than something that can refuse the application.

Designing habitat to align with the strategy

The design response is specific, and it costs less than buying units.

Pick habitat types the strategy names. If the strategy prioritises species-rich neutral grassland, wet woodland and hedgerow connectivity, a scheme that delivers amenity grassland and ornamental planting scores badly on both significance and distinctiveness. One that delivers a species-rich grassland margin, a wet corner fed by the attenuation basin and native hedgerow links scores on both.

Put the habitat where the map wants it. On-site habitat located within a mapped opportunity area attracts the higher multiplier. Within a single site, moving the open space from the western edge to the eastern edge can change the result.

Connect it to something. Strategies are written around networks, and habitat that links to an existing corridor delivers what the strategy is for, which is also what a planning officer and a county ecologist will look for.

The ecological baseline that all of this rests on comes from a Preliminary Ecological Appraisal with habitat classification to the standard the metric requires, and the landscape response usually sits in a Green Infrastructure Plan alongside the planting specification.

Timing where a strategy is still emerging

Some areas are further on than others, and publication dates differ. Where a strategy covering your site has not been published, high strategic significance can still be claimed where another local strategy or plan identifies the location as a priority. Say which document you are relying on and quote it.

Where a strategy is in preparation, check whether draft mapping has been consulted on. A draft carries less weight than a published strategy, but it tells you where the authority is heading, and designing against it avoids a redesign when the strategy lands mid-determination.

The evidence to submit

Reference the strategy explicitly rather than leaving the metric to speak for itself.

• Name the strategy, the responsible authority and the publication or version date.
• Include the map extract with the site boundary drawn on it.
• State which priority or opportunity area the site falls within, quoting the relevant text.
• Explain, habitat parcel by habitat parcel, why each strategic significance score was selected, because an assessor checking the metric will test exactly that.
• Show the alignment between the habitats proposed and the priorities named in the strategy.
• Where off-site units are used, state the strategy area they sit in.

The biodiversity gain plan and the Biodiversity Net Gain Assessment behind it are not documents to improvise. 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, so an AI-assisted draft is a starting point for that specialist rather than a substitute for them.

Enter the postcode on PlanScope to see the ecological designations recorded against the site before you commission the baseline survey.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. For specialist technical reports, qualified professional input may be required. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.