The Housing Forum recently held the 2nd in our series of Decarbonisation Webinars for 2023, which focused on Biodiversity Net Gain.
Caroline Compton-James from Osborne opened the session with some recent examples of biodiversity enhancements and carbon reduction on construction projects.
The webinar then heard from Chandeni Bissumbhar from the Future Homes Hub who explained what biodiversity net gain (BNG) is and how it works. Biodiversity net gain is being introduced to the English planning system from November 2023, and to small sites from April 2024. New developments are required to create a 10% uplift in biodiversity. To deliver BNG, the best option is to increase biodiversity on site, but other options include increasing it on another site, or alternatively by buying Statutory Credits.
Kate Watson, from Turner and Townsend then gave an update on the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (SHDF). Successful bidders were announced in March this year and a total of £778m of grant funding was allocated. Further funding is expected from 2025 though the details are not yet known.
Richard Brinkworth from Leap Environmental, part of the RSK Group, then set out why we need to take action in the construction sector to protect the environment. They are concerned that risk assessment has become over-cautious around the risks for contaminated land, and this increases carbon emissions. For example, soil should be reused where possible.
Finally, we heard from Mike Davis from Waterstons who outlined an example of a carbon footprint case study that Waterstons have undertaken for a social housing client. Quick wins they identified in this instance were switching to green gas and electricity tariffs; and major projects involved moving to electric vehicles, low carbon goods and services and retrofitting. Incremental changes recommended were low carbon business travel, low carbon employee commuting and low carbon homeworking.
The Housing Forum thanks to all the panelists for an informative session – we’ll be returning to these topics later in the year.
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