Defra publishes CEP's evaluation of the biodiversity offsetting pilot scheme in England
Defra has published the final evaluation report by CEP [1] of the Biodiversity Offsetting Pilot Scheme in England that ran from April 2012 to March 2014.
Dr Bill Sheate, CEP's Project Director for the evaluation said:
We are delighted that Defra has finally published the biodiversity offsetting evaluation report. We concluded in our evaluation that whilst biodiversity offsetting has the potential to deliver improvements in biodiversity outcomes it will require additional resources and ecological expertise in local authorities to deliver it.
Where residual biodiversity loss is identified offsetting will increase costs overall for developers compared to current practice. It is likely that it would, at best, deliver only marginal benefits in terms of streamlining the planning process for agreeing compensation for biodiversity loss.
The final report includes supplementary reports on Indicative Costs of Current Compensation Arrangements for Biodiversity Loss: Illustrative Case Studies (Task 4 Report) and A review of recent biodiversity offsetting practice in Germany
[1] CEP, in association with IEEP, was commissioned to evaluate the biodiversity offsetting pilot scheme between July 2012 and June 2014.