BCP Biodiversity report 2025

Access to nature is of vital importance for the health and well-being of residents and visitors, supporting mental and physical health. BCP is an area of high nature value but access to green spaces is unequal, and biodiversity is generally declining across the UK and within BCP.

This 2025 report outlines the actions taken by BCP Council to comply with the Biodiversity Duty under the Environment Act 2021.

It presents BCP’s first report on biodiversity and a summary of monitoring, reporting and our actions for delivery for nature recovery. These plans will ensure nature is considered fully, declines are reversed and that access to nature is provided. It will support the greening of our urban environment and are part of the work as foundation level Nature Towns.

The full report comprises three seperate documents:

Biodiversity Net Gain Report 2024-2025

Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) is a planning policy requirement under the Environment Act 2021, mandating that developments in England must deliver at least a 10% net gain in biodiversity. This is achieved by enhancing or creating habitats either on-site or off-site, measured using the Defra Biodiversity Metric.

The enhanced biodiversity duty requires the Council to publish a report that includes a summary of actions taken to comply with the Biodiversity Duty, how the Council intends to comply with the biodiversity duty in the next reporting period, actions carried out to meet biodiversity net gain obligations and how the biodiversity net gain obligations will be met in the next reporting period.

Since adoption, in BCP there has been:

  • Biodiversity Gain Plans approved, of these, 2 have achieved 10% net gain on site; the other 14 off-site through purchasing units.
  • These off-site units mean that 2.44 area habitat units have been bought, and 0.22 hedgerow units.

… Download the BCP Biodiversity Net Gain report 2024-2025

Biodiversity report 2025

The first BCP Biodiversity report provides a summary of various work across different teams that support biodiversity within BCP, work in partnerships, key measures on specific species along with future actions and priorities.

Summary of high-level corporate actions:

  • Governance review of the current Council Decision Impact Assessment tool for sustainability to improve accountability and decision making for climate and nature.
  • Creation of a nature dashboard to complement the existing Climate and sustainability online tool to track and report on green house gas emissions and energy usage.
  • Planning Advisory Service have chosen BCP as one of its pilot areas for use of a nature recovery toolkit for local authorities. This will help to align green efforts across departments and services, look across other plans and strategies to help streamline benefits and provide a clearer understanding of how to deliver change, funding and cost-saving opportunities.
  • Creation of a habitat banking mechanism and improvements at three BCP owned sites.
  • Develop partnerships for delivery and greater engagement with communities on nature recovery to lead to higher standard Nature Towns accreditation.

… Download the BCP Biodiversity report 2025 including case studies

Green Infrastructure strategic framework, action plan and delivery

The Council has a range of strategies and policies in place that support nature recovery and the ecological emergency, these are summarised in the Green Infrastructure Strategic Framework.

The Green Infrastructure Strategic Framework draws together all of the above policies and strategies and then aligns them to various delivery mechanisms:

  • Financing Nature and a vehicle for Biodiversity Net Gain.
  • Nature Towns and Cities is the accredited scheme that aims to get more people time in nature close to home, in greener, thriving towns and cities. Millions of people living in urban areas lack vital access to nature and green spaces close to home, yet evidence shows it makes us healthier, more connected and more resilient.
  • A new nature recovery delivery group is being formed for Dorset, with the creation of urban and rural nature forums.

The Action plan summarises key work and creates an investible pipeline of projects and deliver at a range of scales, from trees on the corner of a street to multi-partner programmes at landscape scale.

… Download the Green Infrastructure strategic framework and action plan
… The full strategy can be found at BCP Council | Green Infrastructure Strategy

The reporting period covers the last 3 years to November 2025. The next report is required within 5 years of the date of issue

Greenspace Initiatives

Future Parks Rethinking the future of BCP's parks and green spaces

Give to parks, nature & green space Be a force for nature in BCP

Let it grow Managing our grass areas for people and for nature

The Nature Pledge & Garden for Nature Helping nature at home, school or at work

Greenspace strategies, plans & reports Investing in nature recovery, healthy living & climate change resilience

The Stour Valley partnership Working together on a landscape-scale project