Habitat Management and Monitoring Plan

The Habitat Management and Monitoring Plan

A Habitat Management and Monitoring Plan (HMMP) is a document that sets out in detail how newly created or enhanced habitats will be managed, maintained and monitored over time to deliver the intended biodiversity outcomes.

In the context of mandatory biodiversity net gain (BNG), it is the mechanism through which developers and landowners demonstrate that the gains promised at the planning stage will be realised and sustained across the full 30-year securing period required by law.

The HMMP does not replace the legal agreement – a Section 106 obligation or conservation covenant – through which biodiversity gains are secured.

Rather, it sits alongside that agreement as the practical blueprint for delivery. It can be included within the legal agreement itself or prepared as a separate companion document.

Natural England has published a set of HMMP tools, including a main template, a companion habitat guide, a checklist and a monitoring report template, to help structure submissions and standardise the information provided to local authorities.

Use of the template to report monitoring results is not mandatory, but it is widely recommended and broadly expected by local authorities and responsible bodies. 

When is an HMMP Required? 

An HMMP is required wherever habitats are created or enhanced to generate biodiversity units as part of a development’s BNG delivery.

This covers both on-site gains, where habitats are created or improved within the development boundary, and off-site gains, where a landowner or habitat bank operator is managing land away from the development site to supply registered biodiversity units.

For on-site gains, government guidance states that a draft HMMP should be submitted with the planning application, and a full HMMP submitted alongside the biodiversity gain plan as a post-consent condition.

Where significant on-site enhancements are proposed, the HMMP must identify who will review it; this will normally be the local planning authority for the area where the habitat works take place.

For off-site gains, the HMMP must be agreed with either the local planning authority if gains are secured through a Section 106 agreement, or the responsible body if they are secured through a conservation covenant.

For Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects, BNG will be mandatory from 2 November 2026.

For these schemes, a draft HMMP must be submitted with the outline biodiversity gain plan, and an updated HMMP must accompany any subsequent biodiversity gain plan submissions where the proposed significant on-site enhancements have changed.

For small developments using the Small Sites Metric, a separate simplified HMMP template and habitat guide is available.

An HMMP is still expected in a standardised format when requested by the local planning authority to provide information on management proposals and report monitoring results, even for smaller sites with limited habitat complexity.

If land changes hands during the 30-year management period, the HMMP may need to be updated to reflect the new ownership arrangements and management proposals.

What is the Purpose of a Habitat Management and Monitoring Plan?

The core purpose of an HMMP is to translate the biodiversity commitments made at the planning stage into a practical, time-bound delivery plan to manage habitat.

Submitting a biodiversity net gain report and metric calculation is not sufficient on its own to satisfy BNG requirements: the local planning authority must also be satisfied that there is a credible, legally secured and professionally prepared plan in place to ensure those gains are delivered and maintained.

An HMMP achieves this by setting out what habitats will be created or enhanced, how they will be managed across each phase of the 30-year period, when and how monitoring will be carried out, how results will be reported back to the relevant authority, and what steps will be taken if habitats are found not to be performing as intended.

This last element – the adaptive management strategy – is a critical component of any well-prepared HMMP. Habitats are living systems, and conditions on the ground do not always develop in precisely the way anticipated.

The HMMP must provide a framework for responding constructively to underperformance, whether through reseeding, changes to grazing or cutting regimes, scrub management or other corrective interventions, rather than simply recording it.

The HMMP also makes clear who is responsible for each element of the management and monitoring programme.

This is particularly important for off-site gains, where the developer, the landowner, a conservation charity or a wildlife trust may each have distinct roles in delivering, monitoring results and reporting on the agreed habitat outcomes.

On-Site and Off-Site Habitat Management Plans

The scope and content of an HMMP will differ depending on whether it relates to on-site or off-site biodiversity gains.

On-Site Habitat Management Plans

An on-site HMMP covers habitat enhancement and creation schemes within the development boundary.

It is the responsibility of the developer or site manager to carry out the management activities, conduct the monitoring programme and take corrective action if habitats are not developing as intended.

The legal basis for securing these obligations is typically a Section 106 planning obligation, though a conservation covenant may also be used.

On-site gains do not currently need to be registered on the Natural England biodiversity gain site register, unlike off-site habitat bank gains.

Off-Site Habitat Management Plans

An off-site HMMP covers land managed away from the development site to generate registered off-site BNG units for purchase by developers.

It is typically the responsibility of the landowner, a conservation organisation or a specialist habitat bank operator to carry out the management, conduct the monitoring and take corrective action where required.

Off-site HMMPs must be linked to a registered entry on the Natural England biodiversity gain site register, and the legal securing mechanism will be either a Section 106 agreement with the local planning authority or a conservation covenant with a DEFRA-approved responsible body.

Off-site bng units must be purchased from within the same local authority area or national character area as the development in the first instance.

If no suitable units are available locally, units from a neighbouring local authority or national character area can be used.

What Does a Habitat Management Plan Contain? 

The content of each HMMP will vary according to the nature of the habitats, the scale of the development and the specific requirements of the local planning authority or responsible body.

As a general framework, a well-prepared HMMP will include the following components:

Introduction and Context

An overview of the development project, the relevant biodiversity net gain obligation, the purpose of the HMMP and how it relates to the biodiversity gain plan and legal agreement.

This section will also summarise the biodiversity metric calculations, assessment criteria and the unit targets the habitat management and monitoring plan is designed to deliver.

Site Description

A description of the development site or off-site habitat land, covering its location, extent, existing land use, relevant designations, any invasive species, protected species, ecological features of interest and any constraints or opportunities relevant to the proposed habitat works.

Baseline Assessment

A summary of the pre-development ecological baseline of the site, drawing on the habitat survey data used to generate the pre-development unit score in the statutory biodiversity metric.

This provides the starting point against which progress towards nature recovery will be assessed.

Management Aims, Objectives and Targets

A clear statement of what the HMMP is intended to achieve, expressed in measurable terms and aligned with the post-development unit scores committed to in the metric calculation.

This section will also identify the key habitat types being created or enhanced and the target condition for each.

Management Actions

A detailed schedule of the practical management proposals to be carried out across the 30-year period, including habitat establishment works in the first phase, ongoing maintenance activities such as cutting, grazing, scrub control and weed management, and any seasonal considerations relevant to the specific habitat types.

The schedule should be clear enough to be used directly by whoever is responsible for carrying out the work.

Long-Term Management and Monitoring Plan

A programme setting out when habitat monitoring surveys will be carried out, what will be assessed at each survey, what parameters will be used to measure habitat condition and progress, and how nature recovery results will be recorded.

A typical monitoring schedule for a medium-sized habitat establishment project might involve reporting at years 2, 5, 10, 20 and 30.

The monitoring report template published by Natural England provides a standardised format for recording and monitoring results and submitting findings.

Adaptive Management Strategy

A framework for responding to monitoring results, including the conditions that would trigger a management review, the types of corrective intervention available for each habitat type, the timeline within which remedial action should be taken and the process for agreeing changes with the local planning authority or responsible body.

Roles and Responsibilities

A clear statement of who is responsible for managing the habitats, who will monitor habitats, who will prepare and submit the habitat monitoring reports, who will review those reports and who has authority to authorise corrective action.

Where multiple parties are involved such as a developer, a site manager and a monitoring ecologist, the boundaries between their respective roles should be clearly defined.

Legal and Financial Information

Details of the legal mechanism securing the BNG obligations, the duration of the agreement, any relevant conditions or restrictions attached to it, and the sources of funding for management and monitoring activities across the 30-year period.

Financial sustainability is an increasingly important consideration for local planning authorities assessing the credibility of an HMMP, and the plan should address how management costs will be funded in the long term.

Site Plans and Maps

Scaled plans showing the layout of the site, the location and extent of each habitat parcel, the distribution of proposed habitat creation and enhancement works, and relevant contextual information such as boundaries, access points and adjacent land uses.

The HMMP and the Wider BNG Documentation Suite

For most developments subject to mandatory BNG, the HMMP forms one part of a larger set of documents.

Understanding how these relate to each other is important for planning the commission efficiently.

The biodiversity net gain report is the primary technical document containing the metric calculations and the evidence that the 10% BNG requirement will be met.

It is typically prepared and submitted at the planning application stage.

The biodiversity gain plan is the statutory post-consent form published by DEFRA, submitted after planning permission is granted as a discharge of the pre-commencement BNG condition.

The habitat management and monitoring plan should be submitted alongside it.

The habitat management and monitoring plan sits between these two stages in its fully completed form: the draft is submitted with the planning application, and the final version accompanies the biodiversity gain plan.

The monitoring report template is a separate document used during the delivery phase to record and report on habitat condition at each monitoring interval.

It is not submitted at the planning stage but is used throughout the 30-year management period to evidence ongoing BNG delivery.

Get Quotes for an HMMP Today

A habitat management and monitoring plan must be prepared by a competent person with the ecological expertise to assess habitat condition, understand management requirements for the habitats proposed, and apply the monitoring framework correctly.

Natural England’s guidance is explicit on this point: while templates are freely available and can be used by developers to specify work for their ecological contractors, the expertise of a qualified ecologist is essential to ensure the plan is technically credible and will satisfy the requirements of the local planning authority or responsible body when it comes to monitoring results.

Engaging a BNG consultant early in the development process – ideally at the same time as the biodiversity net gain report is being prepared – is the most efficient approach.

This allows the ecological baseline, the metric calculations, the habitat enhancement strategy and the management and monitoring framework to be developed as a coherent whole, rather than as separate documents prepared at different stages by different parties.

Use our free service to get fast, no-obligation quotes from trusted BNG consultants in our network. Fill in the form at the top of this page, and we will connect you with a specialist who can prepare your HMMP alongside the full suite of BNG documentation your development needs.