Item 7 Scottish Biodiversity Metric Consultation For Information

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Item 7 Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh 13 Novem­ber 2026 Page 1 of 5

For inform­a­tion

Title: Con­sulta­tion on Scot­tish Plan­ning Biod­iversity Met­ric Pre­pared by: Dav­id Berry, Head of Plan­ning & Chief Plan­ning Officer Scott Shanks, Eco­lo­gic­al Advice Officer

Pur­pose This paper is inten­ded to inform mem­bers of NatureScot’s con­sulta­tion on a pro­posed Scot­tish Plan­ning Biod­iversity Met­ric, raise aware­ness of the likely use of the met­ric tool to sup­port the assess­ment of future plan­ning applic­a­tions for major and nation­al devel­op­ments, and out­line the approach pro­posed by officers for respond­ing to the consultation.

Recom­mend­a­tions The Com­mit­tee is asked to: a) Note the con­sulta­tion and the poten­tial use of the Scot­tish Plan­ning Biod­iversity Met­ric tool to sup­port the assess­ment of future plan­ning applic­a­tions; and b) Note the approach pro­posed by officers for respond­ing to the consultation.

Back­ground and stra­tegic context

1. A Scot­tish Plan­ning Biod­iversity Met­ric (SPBM) is being developed to sup­port the imple­ment­a­tion of Nation­al Plan­ning Frame­work 4 (NPF4) Policy 3: Biodiversity.
2. Amongst oth­er things, NPF4 Policy 3 aims to deliv­er pos­it­ive effects for biod­iversity from new devel­op­ments. In par­tic­u­lar, Policy 3b states that: ​“Devel­op­ment pro­pos­als for nation­al or major devel­op­ment, or for devel­op­ment that requires an Envir­on­ment­al Impact Assess­ment will only be sup­por­ted where it can be demon­strated that the pro­pos­al will con­serve, restore and enhance biod­iversity, includ­ing nature net­works so they are in a demon­strably bet­ter state than without inter­ven­tion… To inform this, best prac­tice assess­ment meth­ods should be used”

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Item 7 Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh 13 Novem­ber 2026 Page 2 of 5

(emphas­is added). The policy goes on to state that pro­pos­als with­in these cat­egor­ies must provide sig­ni­fic­ant biod­iversity enhancements.

1. NPF4 does not require a par­tic­u­lar assess­ment approach or meth­od­o­logy to demon­strate the deliv­ery of sig­ni­fic­ant biod­iversity enhance­ments, and the assess­ment may be qual­it­at­ive or quant­it­at­ive. In the absence of an estab­lished Scot­tish assess­ment approach, a range of meth­ods have been used to meas­ure biod­iversity at a site level. This lack of a stand­ard­ised approach could lead to incon­sist­en­cies in imple­ment­a­tion of the policy. NatureScot have been com­mis­sioned to devel­op the SPBM in order to help address this and to offer a con­sist­ent, best prac­tice quant­it­at­ive approach for use across Scotland.
2. The cur­rent con­sulta­tion, which runs until 30 Novem­ber 2026, sets out NatureScot’s pro­posed SPBM tool and seeks views from inter­ested parties.

How will the Scot­tish Plan­ning Biod­iversity Met­ric work?

1. The pro­posed SPBM is an adapt­a­tion of the stat­utory biod­iversity met­ric cur­rently used in Eng­land and has been designed to bet­ter fit the Scot­tish envir­on­ment­al and policy con­text. Its use will be dif­fer­ent to the Eng­lish met­ric, reflect­ing Scotland’s policy-led approach to deliv­er­ing pos­it­ive effects for biod­iversity, which dif­fers from England’s stat­utory approach.
2. The SPBM com­prises: a) a user guide b) the SPBM cal­cu­la­tion tool (an Excel spread­sheet) c) hab­it­at con­di­tion assess­ment sheets (also in Excel format)
3. The pro­posed SPBM tool enables a quant­it­at­ive biod­iversity assess­ment by cal­cu­lat­ing the hab­it­at-based changes that would res­ult from a devel­op­ment pro­pos­al. The tool uses hab­it­ats as a proxy for wider biod­iversity value and derives Biod­iversity Units (BUs) based on cer­tain inputs and mul­ti­plic­a­tion for­mula. The tool will work by cal­cu­lat­ing and com­par­ing the num­ber of pre-devel­op­ment (baseline) BUs with the expec­ted num­ber of post-devel­op­ment BUs to help show wheth­er a devel­op­ment pro­pos­al will deliv­er pos­it­ive effects for biodiversity.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Item 7 Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh 13 Novem­ber 2026 Page 3 of 5

1. In prac­tice, the pro­posed SPBM tool will there­fore first be used to cal­cu­late the baseline value of a devel­op­ment site. This requires the user to add inform­a­tion about each hab­it­at par­cel on site, based on ini­tial field sur­vey data. The tool then cal­cu­lates a baseline BU value for each hab­it­at par­cel using an auto­mat­ic­ally assigned ​‘dis­tinct­ive­ness’ and manu­ally derived ​‘stra­tegic sig­ni­fic­ance’ score for each habitat.
2. Once the baseline value across the site is estab­lished, the pre­dicted BU value post-devel­op­ment can be cal­cu­lated. This involves con­sid­er­ing pre­dicted dir­ect or indir­ect hab­it­at loss / change with­in each hab­it­at par­cel as a con­sequence of the devel­op­ment, as well as any pro­posed improve­ments (eg through hab­it­at res­tor­a­tion or cre­ation of new hab­it­ats). For the post-devel­op­ment cal­cu­la­tions, the SPBM tool applies a series of risk mul­ti­pli­ers to account for the poten­tial uncer­tainty and time lag involved in deliv­er­ing hab­it­at improve­ments, and the spa­tial rela­tion­ship between the loc­a­tion of pro­posed improve­ments rel­at­ive to where any adverse impacts asso­ci­ated with the devel­op­ment occur.
3. After input­ting baseline and post-devel­op­ment inform­a­tion, the SPBM tool helps to show wheth­er a bal­ance (or ​‘off­set’) is reached between the BUs lost through devel­op­ment and the pre­dicted post-devel­op­ment BUs achieved through pro­posed hab­it­at improve­ments. The tool will also help to show how many addi­tion­al BUs are pro­posed to be delivered bey­ond the off­set level to achieve ​‘enhance­ment’. In this way, the SPBM will help to show wheth­er the devel­op­ment would meet the NPF4 require­ment of leav­ing biod­iversity in a demon­strably bet­ter state.
4. The SPBM does not identi­fy a numer­ic­al tar­get or threshold to indic­ate wheth­er a devel­op­ment pro­pos­al would provide ​‘sig­ni­fic­ant’ biod­iversity enhance­ments in line with NPF4 Policy 3b. Rather, this will be a mat­ter of judge­ment for the plan­ning author­ity based on the indi­vidu­al cir­cum­stances of any plan­ning application.

Poten­tial bene­fits and limitations

1. The main anti­cip­ated bene­fit of the pro­posed SPBM is that it should help to provide a more con­sist­ent and trans­par­ent approach to cal­cu­lat­ing changes in biod­iversity for large scale devel­op­ment pro­pos­als, and thus help to bet­ter imple­ment NPF4 Policy 3b. The pro­posed BU approach is inten­ded to be under­stand­able for both

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Item 7 Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh 13 Novem­ber 2026 Page 4 of 5

eco­lo­gists and con­sent­ing author­ity officers, and it is expec­ted that BUs can act as a use­ful means of com­mu­nic­a­tion between developers, eco­lo­gists, engin­eers and plan­ners, lead­ing to bet­ter sit­ing and design of devel­op­ment proposals.

1. How­ever, it is import­ant to note that met­rics are sub­ject to lim­it­a­tions. In par­tic­u­lar, the pro­posed SPBM (in com­mon with oth­er met­rics) delib­er­ately applies a rel­at­ively broad-brush approach to cal­cu­lat­ing changes in biod­iversity. Also, as the SPBM tool takes a hab­it­at-based approach, impacts on pro­tec­ted spe­cies and oth­er con­ser­va­tion pri­or­ity spe­cies are likely to require sep­ar­ate con­sid­er­a­tion. It will there­fore remain import­ant for pro­fes­sion­al eco­lo­gic­al judge­ment to be applied along­side any met­ric out­puts when assess­ing devel­op­ment proposals.
2. It is also import­ant to note that the SPBM does not change exist­ing stat­utory pro­tec­tions (Spe­cial Areas of Con­ser­va­tion, Spe­cial Pro­tec­tion Areas, Sites of Spe­cial Sci­entif­ic Interest etc) or assess­ment require­ments (Hab­it­ats Reg­u­la­tions Apprais­al etc) in rela­tion to the nat­ur­al environment.

The con­sulta­tion and pro­posed response

1. The con­sulta­tion doc­u­ments are largely tech­nic­al in nature, and the con­sulta­tion response form is a sub­stan­tial doc­u­ment which seeks views on detailed, oper­a­tion­al aspects of the SPBM meth­od­o­logy and assess­ment process.
2. It is pro­posed that Officers will sub­mit a response which broadly wel­comes the pro­posed SPBM as a tool to improve con­sist­ency in decision mak­ing whilst acknow­ledging the lim­it­a­tions of its use, and which draws on spe­cial­ist Officer input in rela­tion to detailed ques­tions on the SPBM methodology.

Next steps

1. Officers will respond to the con­sulta­tion by the dead­line on 30 Novem­ber 2026.
2. There­after, it is under­stood that NatureScot will pro­duce a sum­mary of con­sulta­tion responses togeth­er with an out­line of how they will be used to refine the SPBM, which is expec­ted to be launched in Spring 2027.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Item 7 Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh 13 Novem­ber 2026 Page 5 of 5

1. Once launched, it is pro­posed that Officers will deliv­er a train­ing ses­sion to Plan­ning Com­mit­tee mem­bers on the SPBM and its expec­ted use in the assess­ment of future plan­ning applications.

Dav­id Berry 3 Novem­ber 2026 davidberry@​cairngorms.​co.​uk