Complying with the biodiversity duty

Publication Year

2025

Document Status

Current

Abstract

Explains the biodiversity duty and how public authorities can comply with it. Covers: who must comply with the biodiversity duty; when to meet the biodiversity duty; consideration of relevant strategies; how biodiversity duty helps achieve biodiversity goals and targets; actions that could be taken; management of land to improve biodiversity; education, advice and raising awareness; reviewing internal policies and processes; preparation for biodiversity net gain; reporting of biodiversity policies and actions.

Document History

Last updated: 17 September 2025 - Added advice saying that actions under the duty can be taken on an ongoing basis, with suggestions for how to do this. A new section called 'Completing your consideration' has been added to help public authorities consider what actions they can take to meet the duty. Also updated information on relevant policies to reflect recent changes, including local nature recovery strategies, biodiversity net gain, and protected landscapes. Sourced from: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/complying-with-the-biodiversity-duty and converted to pdf. Whilst we endeavour to capture all updates it is subject to receiving alerts from the publisher and there may be formatting or punctuation changes applied to the html version that do not affect the text. Document type: guidance. First published: 17 May 2023.

Publisher Information