Somerset LPA BNG

Somerset Council has been a single unitary authority since 2023, replacing the county council and the four districts of Mendip, Sedgemoor, South Somerset and Somerset West and Taunton; Bath and North East Somerset and North Somerset remain separate. The Somerset Levels and Moors fill the centre, about 650 square kilometres of wet grassland, reedbed and peat moor between the Quantock and Mendip hills, with 32 SSSIs and a Ramsar designation. At RSPB Ham Wall, reedbeds created on former peat workings typically hold 18 to 20 breeding male bitterns. The limestone Mendip Hills, with Cheddar Gorge, lie to the north, the Quantock Hills, England’s first Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in 1956, rise in the west, and 71% of Exmoor National Park lies in the county, although the Exmoor National Park Authority, not Somerset Council, is the planning authority there. On the coast, Bridgwater Bay National Nature Reserve holds the largest area of saltmarsh in Somerset, beside the Steart Marshes managed realignment on the River Parrett estuary.

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Biodiversity Net Gain became a legal requirement for major developments in England on 12 February 2024, and for small sites on 2 April 2024. Somerset has no single local plan yet, so the plans of the four former districts still apply, and a scoping consultation for a new Somerset Local Plan ran from 19 June to 9 August 2026. On 14 February 2024 the council’s Planning and Transport Policy Sub-Committee adopted the Somerset BNG Guidance Note as a material planning consideration, not as an SPD, together with local BNG validation requirements. The council asks for the national 10% and sets out a sequence of on-site delivery first, then off-site units, then statutory credits. It lists ten habitat banks secured after its 2024 call for sites but says it does not sell the units itself, and its Local Nature Recovery Strategy was published on 27 March 2026.

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Phosphates are the main constraint. Natural England advised all Somerset planning authorities on 17 August 2020 that the Somerset Levels and Moors Ramsar site is at risk from excess phosphates, and new housing in the Tone, Parrett and Brue catchments must show phosphate neutrality using the council’s own calculator. A smaller area falls in the River Axe SAC catchment, covered by Natural England advice of March 2022. The council has approved a phosphate credit scheme, first in the Brue catchment in May 2023, and holds £9.6 million from the Local Nutrient Mitigation Fund, so a scheme here can face two tests at once: Biodiversity Net Gain and phosphate mitigation.