FOI request (FOIR-648292283)

Biodiversity Net Gain implementation (planning/ecology)

Requested Thu 19 September 2024
Responded Wed 25 September 2024

Please find below some questions about how the council is implementing Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG):

1. Please can you indicate what, if any, software the council has obtained specifically to help with implementing the following aspects of BNG?

a. Validation of applications, including checking that the correct version of the Biodiversity Metric has been submitted.

b. Determination of applications subject to BNG, including assessment of ecological considerations.

c. Determining if the biodiversity gain objective (biodiversity gain condition) is met.

d. Monitoring of planning obligations set out under S106 agreements or Conservation Covenants, analogous to other planning obligations.

e. Ecological monitoring of BNG habitats, a new statutory duty required by legislation, including ensuring that individual habitats on a given site are progressing in line with expectations set out in the Habitat Management and Monitoring Plan.

f. Statutory reporting of BNG habitat progress under the NERC Act Biodiversity Duty.

2. Is the council generating income, or planning to generate income, by charging BNG monitoring fees? If so, how are you calculating this fee?

3. Please answer the questions below to indicate if the council has made use of the government's new burdens funding for BNG in the financial year 2023/24:

a. How much of the funding was spent by the council in this year?

b. What was the funding spent on?

4. Please answer the questions below to indicate if the council has made use of the government's new burdens funding for BNG in the financial year 2024/25:

a. How much of the funding was spent by the council in this year?

b. What was the funding spent on?

Response

The Freedom of Information Act is based on recorded information held by a local authority, it is not a tool to ask questions.

Your request is mainly questions, and therefore falls outside the remit of the Act.

In terms of contracts and amounts spent, this information is being refused.

NOTICE OF REFUSAL

The information you have requested is commercially sensitive and falls under Section 43 of the Freedom of Information Act - Commercially Sensitive Information - Information prejudicing commercial interests - commercial interest relating to an organisation's commercial activity and may include trading activity procurement and relationships with third parties.

The exemption afforded by Section 43 is subject to what is known as the 'public interest test'. When applying the test in a particular case a public authority is deciding whether the public interest is better served by non-disclosure than by disclosure.

Although the Freedom of Information Act does not define 'in the public interest', there is a presumption under Freedom of Information that openness is in the public interest. In applying the public interest test a public authority will take into account the distinction that has been often made by courts between things that are in the public interest, and things that merely interest the public. Where applicants have not identified public interest considerations succinctly or accurately, the public authority has a responsibility under the Act to make their own assessment of the public interest considerations in the particular case.

We have identified the following public interest factors that may be seen as encouraging the disclosure of information:

a) accountability of public spending.

We consider these factors to be of limited relevance in relation to the information in question.

Public interest factors seen as encouraging non-disclosure are, generally, the exemptions themselves. In consideration of this matter we came to the following conclusions:

a) ensuring that companies are able to compete for business fairly.

b) damage to reputation and/or financial interests.

In weighing the factors for and against disclosure we have concluded that the likely benefit to the applicant and the wider public of disclosure is outweighed by the likely prejudice caused by such disclosure and that therefore the public interest is better served by non-disclosure.

For the reasons given above we will not be communicating to you the information you have requested.