Oxford Archaeology is leading a new collaborative project, funded by Historic England, that will explore the historic environment and Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) developments.
With Britain widely recognised as one of the world’s most nature-depleted countries, BNG is central to Government plans to instigate nature recovery. In February 2024 BNG became a legal requirement of most developments in England, requiring them to deliver a 10% increase in biodiversity. If this increase cannot be achieved within the ‘onsite’ limits of the development, habitat creation can instead be undertaken at ‘offsite’ locations. However, offsite BNG developments are not legally required to consider the historic environment in the same way other developments must: it is unclear how the historic environment is currently being incorporated into the planning, execution and presentation of offsite BNG projects.
Historic England is pleased to support this much-needed project on biodiversity net gain (BNG) and the historic environment. Better BNG will help us to build a picture of how BNG schemes, a key delivery mechanism for nature recovery, interact with heritage, and to identify where we need further research, resources and guidance to support mutually beneficial, integrated management approaches to the natural and historic environment in BNG schemes. This will help ensure that we get the best result for the environment as a whole, integrating heritage and demonstrating its value in the bigger, better and joined-up wildlife-rich places of the Nature Recovery Network."
Erika Diaz Petersen
Principal National Landscape Adviser, Historic England
One key question the project will address is ‘How well do we currently understand the interplay between elements of the historic environment, different types of habitats, and practices of habitat conservation and creation?’. For instance, do we, as archaeologists, really understand current pond creation practices and if and how these are likely to intersect with buried archaeological features? The project team will identify and collate research and resources that:
- show the positive and negative impact of specific habitats on different types of historic environment assets, such as buried archaeology, upstanding earthworks, or historic landscapes.
- identify the potential for elements of the historic environment to offer beneficial conditions for the conservation or restoration of certain species or habitats
- present examples of the ways that changes in the management of the historic or natural environment has either positive or negative impacts on the other.
A really important part of this project is establishing a picture of what resources are currently available, how easy they are for other BNG stakeholders to access and understand, and what gaps need to be filled with new resources and research. As archaeologists, it is our job to communicate the reasons why protecting the historic environment is important, and the ways it can positively contribute to BNG schemes”
Dr Nick Overton
Lead Researcher and Project Officer
BNG projects have a diverse group of stakeholders, including local planning authorities, ecologists, developers, land managers and farmers/landowners. Therefore, it is vital that we also understand how current knowledge of the historic environment and nature recovery is spread across different stakeholders involved in the design and implementation of BNG projects. Working with a specialist panel of advisors from Historic England, Natural England, the National Trust, Buckinghamshire Council, The Peak District National Park and Bioscan UK, this project is undertaking an extensive survey of a wide range of BNG stakeholders. These consultations will assess the ways that the historic environment may or may not be considered in current BNG projects, and identify whether people who are not historic environment experts are aware of the relevant issues relating to the historic environment in BNG projects.
Nature recovery schemes like BNG are now underway on a massive scale in Britain, and often involve people who have little interest in or knowledge about the historic environment. In this context, it is really important to get a clear handle on if and how the historic environment will be affected by and can contribute to specific nature recovery practices so that we can share this information with others and play an active role in creating more biodiverse and interesting landscapes in future"
Dr Anwen Cooper
Project Executive
The aim is to identify ways to maximize the inclusion of the historic environment in future BNG projects; not only to protect heritage assets, but also to ensure historic environment assets positively contribute to nature recovery schemes. In the future, archaeology’s ability to vividly reconstruct past environments spanning millennia, and the myriad ways that humans lived within them, could help identify lost elements of environments that might be desirable to be brought back in BNG projects. It could also identify prominent species in past climate change events that could be important for the management of habitats in future changes to the climate. Archaeology can also show different ways past humans related to the world around them. At a time of pressing environmental concerns, opportunities to present accounts of the past which demonstrate that our current destructive attitudes to the world around us are an aberration, not a rule, could be the key in changing contemporary attitudes to our environment.
This project puts OA right at the center of the conversation about BNG and the historic environment. The opportunity to be a leading voice in shaping future practices that will integrate the historic environment and the natural environment for the betterment of plant, animal and human communities is really exciting.”
Graeme Clarke
Project Manager
This project is funded by
