Laura Homfray

Associate – Natural Capital, Greengage Environmental Ltd

Laura is a specialist in nature strategy, natural capital and biodiversity advisory services. She has extensive experience in developing corporate nature strategies, frameworks and guidance which allow organisations to quantify and measure changes on biodiversity and ecosystem services within their portfolios, in a way which can be linked to a company’s wider ESG goals. Prior to joining Greengage Laura was the Team Leader for the WSP UK’s Natural Capital team. Laura was a Technical Contributor to the National Guidance for BNG for the UK chartered institutes (CIRIA, CIEEM and IEMA). She has notable project experience including developing the GI Framework for Greater Manchester and piloting Natural England and Oxford University’s Environmental Benefits from Nature tool and acting as the Project Partnership Coordinator for the development of NATURE tool. Prior to moving into consultancy, Laura worked in the Yorkshire Water sustainability team, where her work focused on monetising environmental impacts and piloting natural and social capital approaches as part of the 6 Capitals framework.

Contributed to

1

Biodiversity net gain—an environmental consultant’s perspective

Practice Notes

This Practice Note looks at biodiversity net gain (BNG) from an environmental consultant’s perspective. It covers: how BNG works in practice; how biodiversity units are calculated; good practice principles for BNG, such as following the mitigation hierarchy, avoiding the loss of biodiversity that cannot be offset elsewhere, engaging stakehoders, addressing risk, achieving the best outcomes for biodiversity, creating a net gain legacy, and optimising sustainability; the stages of the BNG process; and common challenges of delivering BNG in practice.

Planning