BNG services – for farmers and landowners
Help you identify opportunities. This might be a small project in a field corner used as a means of supplementing an individual farm’s income or a whole estate vision providing hundreds or even thousands of ‘units’ through a landscape-scale strategy.
Calculate your baseline. We combine information in the public domain with our in-house data, local knowledge and familiarity with individual areas of land. We then ‘ground-truth’ this with habitat surveys. We are accredited (CIEEM) ecologists and use the ‘UKHab’ methodology and Defra’s Biodiversity Metric to calculate your potential BNG unit ‘yield’.
Model habitat creation. We’ll talk through all the options with you and propose implementation and management plans which maximise the return, but are achievable and complement your strategic land use ambitions, as well as your personal objectives. We marry these with Local Nature Recovery Strategies and local strategic planning and biodiversity policies.
Introductions, negotiations and contracts. We can advise where the best deals are to be had, negotiate on your behalf and check all the small print. Through our connections with developers and infrastructure companies, we may also be able to connect you to would-be partners, acting as a broker and facilitating arrangements.
Delivery. Whether it’s devising grazing schemes, selecting grass sward mixes or managing fencing contractors, we can get involved as much or as little as suits you to make sure the vision is successfully delivered, generating a long-term revenue and fulfilling your desire to work in a nature-friendly way.
Our team includes in-house experts accredited with the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (CIEEM), planning specialists, RICS Chartered Surveyors, plus farm and estate management consultants, so can offer a complete suite of services.
Having been selected to be involved with one of Natural England’s nine pilot projects to help establish the legislative framework for BNG, we have been close to the market from the start and involved in a raft of agreements.
We also have decades of experience of farm habitats and stewardship agreements at individual farm level, as well as with ‘cluster groups’ and landscape-scale habitat and nature-recovery projects..
We can help you design, deliver and manage a BNG project within your thriving farm and estate business.
“CLM is a great sounding board. Whether I’m making infrastructure decisions, considering commercial projects or submitting a tender to rent land, I know I’ll get objective, constructive and helpful advice, even if it’s not necessarily what I want to hear. They really speak my language. From the day-to-day items like valuations to more strategic ones like rights or way and big diversification projects, they’re one of my first ports of call.”
Rob Wilkins
