Biodiversity Gain Register Adds Infrastructure Projects
At first glance, this looks like one of those planning-law amendments that only specialists will read. But the Biodiversity Gain Site Register (Amendment) Regulations 2026 do something simple and important. From 29 May 2026, the biodiversity gain site register can be used not only for developments with planning permission, but also for projects that have development consent under the Planning Act 2008. According to the statutory instrument published on legislation.gov.uk, the regulations were made on 5 May 2026 and laid before Parliament on 6 May 2026. They were signed by Mary Creagh, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. If you are wondering why that matters, the short answer is this: the government has widened the register so biodiversity gains can be linked to a broader group of developments, including infrastructure projects.
If this area is new to you, it helps to start with the register itself. The biodiversity gain site register is an official record of land where habitat improvements are created and then counted towards development requirements. In other words, it is a way of showing where nature improvements are supposed to happen, and which developments those improvements are meant to support. The new regulations also insert a definition of a 'biodiversity gain site' into the 2024 rules. In plain English, that means land where habitat enhancement must be carried out under a conservation covenant or a planning obligation, kept going for at least 30 years after the works are finished, and made available to one or more developments. The Explanatory Note says this new definition replaces the section 100 Environment Act 2021 definition for the purposes of the register rules themselves.
Most of the amendment is made up of very short wording changes, but they all point in the same direction. Where the 2024 regulations referred to 'planning permission', the 2026 instrument now adds 'or development consent (as the case may be)'. It also adds references to Schedule 2A to the Planning Act 2008 alongside Schedule 7A to the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. That may sound dry, but it is the kind of drafting that changes who can use a legal system. Regulation 6, on land eligible to be registered, is widened. Regulation 8, on what an application to register land must include, is widened too. Regulations 12 and 13, which deal with allocating habitat enhancement after land is already on the register, are also updated. When we translate that into everyday language, the message is clear: the register paperwork now recognises both planning routes.
This is the part worth pausing on. Before the amendment, the register rules were built around the ordinary planning permission route. After 29 May 2026, land can be entered on the register, and habitat enhancement can be allocated, where a project has gone through the development consent route under the Planning Act 2008 as well. **Quick translation:** 'Development consent' is the approval route used under the 2008 Act for infrastructure planning. **What this means:** if a project sits in that route rather than the standard planning permission route, the biodiversity gain site register can still be used. That is technical, but it matters because the register only works properly when the law recognises the approval route a project has actually taken.
Just as important is what has not changed. The land still needs a legal mechanism behind it, either a conservation covenant or a planning obligation. The habitat enhancement still has to be maintained for at least 30 years after the works are completed. And the enhancement still needs to be available to be allocated to development, whether that allocation is conditional or unconditional, and whether payment is involved or not. So this is not a rewrite of biodiversity gain policy from scratch. It is better understood as a fix to the legal plumbing. The government has not removed the long-term maintenance duty, and it has not stripped away the need for formal obligations. What it has done is make sure the register rules can work with both planning permission and development consent.
The regulations extend to England and Wales, but the laws they amend are tied to the English planning and infrastructure system named in the instrument. The Explanatory Note on legislation.gov.uk also says no full impact assessment was produced because no significant impact on the private, voluntary or public sector is expected. That sentence tells you something about how ministers see the change. They are presenting it as an administrative adjustment rather than a major policy shift. Even so, administrative changes are often where the real story sits. If a register, an application form and the parent law do not match, the whole process becomes harder to use. This amendment is meant to stop that mismatch.
There is a useful media-literacy lesson here as well. Statutory instruments can look impenetrable, but a phrase as small as 'or development consent' can tell you exactly who is being brought inside the rules. In this case, the answer is projects using the Planning Act 2008 route. If you want the one-sentence takeaway, here it is: from 29 May 2026, biodiversity gain sites on the register can be used in connection with both ordinary planning permission and development consent, so the register now fits better with the way environmental obligations are applied across different kinds of development. That may sound procedural, but procedure decides what can happen next.