Wealden LPA BNG

Wealden is the largest district in East Sussex, 835 square kilometres and one of the most rural in England, with two-thirds of it inside either the High Weald National Landscape or the South Downs National Park. Ashdown Forest sits on the highest sandy ridge of the High Weald, a block of lowland heath that holds Dartford warblers and nightjars. To the south the Pevensey Levels cover about 3,500 hectares of wet grazing marsh, ditches and dykes, an SSSI, Special Area of Conservation, Ramsar site and National Nature Reserve. In between, the River Cuckmere rises near Heathfield, and Arlington Reservoir near Hailsham is an SSSI and local nature reserve holding over 1% of UK wintering wigeon. The five main towns are Crowborough, Hailsham, Heathfield, Polegate and Uckfield.

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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. Wealden District Council’s interim advice asks for a minimum 10% gain and says this will rise to 20% on qualifying sites under the emerging Wealden Local Plan. That plan is at its final Regulation 19 stage, with consultation from 21 September to 2 November 2026, and has not been submitted or adopted, so 10% is the working figure now. The council’s page treats off-site as any land outside the application boundary and notes that statutory credits from Natural England are available where neither on-site nor off-site delivery is possible. Wealden has no BNG Supplementary Planning Document of its own. Inside the South Downs National Park, planning is not a Wealden matter: the National Park Authority has been the planning authority for the whole park since 1 April 2011, and Wealden stopped acting for it on 1 April 2012. Applications there are decided under the South Downs Local Plan, adopted in 2019, which carries its own biodiversity net gain policy, SD9.

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The main local constraints are protected sites rather than space. Air pollution from traffic is the main threat to the Ashdown Forest SAC, and recreation pressure on the SPA is handled through a strategic access management and monitoring tariff. Natural England has given site-specific advice on the Pevensey Levels, and the Sussex North water neutrality zone, which Natural England withdrew on 31 October 2025, never covered Wealden. The East Sussex and Brighton and Hove Local Nature Recovery Strategy, published in July 2026, covers the district.