# The Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015, Article 37A: Meaning of biodiversity gain hierarchy


In this Part, “biodiversity gain hierarchy” means the following actions in the following order of priority—
(a) in relation to onsite habitat with a habitat distinctiveness score, applied in the biodiversity metric, equal to or higher than four—
(i) avoiding adverse effects of the development, or
(ii) insofar as those adverse effects cannot be avoided, mitigating those effects;
(b) in relation to any onsite habitat which is adversely affected by major development, compensating for that adverse effect by—
(i) habitat enhancement of onsite habitat;
(ii) insofar as there cannot be that enhancement, creation of onsite habitat;
(iii) insofar as there cannot be that creation, the availability of registered offsite biodiversity gain for allocation to the development;
(iv) insofar as registered offsite biodiversity gain cannot be allocated to the development, the purchase of biodiversity credits.
(c) in relation to any onsite habitat which is adversely affected by development which is not major development, compensating for that adverse affect by—
(i) habitat enhancement of onsite habitat, creation of onsite habitat or the availability of registered offsite biodiversity gain for allocation to that development;
(ii) insofar as none of the actions in sub-paragraph (i) can be done, the purchase of biodiversity credits.

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Source: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2015/595/article/37A (the official version)
Page: https://openlegislation.uk/town-and-country-planning-development-management-procedure-england-order-2015/article-37A
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives.