Large-scale farmers’ group to help developers unlock housebuilding

The Environmental Farmers Group (EFG) has been set up by a group of farmers in Hampshire, Wiltshire and Dorset to deliver highly-assured, coordinated environmental projects on a catchment scale.
The cooperative currently comprises over 220 farmers covering 110,000ha (over 1% of England’s farmed area) and is growing in other parts of the country including North Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Devon and Yorkshire.
Legal requirements to offset the environmental impact of developments can delay housebuilding as it is often difficult for developers to find farmers with an appropriate land parcel. The EFG model simplifies the process by providing one point of contact, through its partner, Natural Capital Advisory (NCA), with access to 100s of farmers willing to provide nutrient and Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) offsets and other environmental services, in locations across England.
The EFG has successfully completed phosphate offset agreements and has a pipeline of requests for nutrient and BNG offsets at various stages of completion. This means the required processes and documentation are already in place, speeding up the delivery of solutions.
EFG chairman and managing partner of Allenford Farms, Rob Shepherd, said: “The farmers in the EFG have an impressive record of landscape-scale conservation successes and command the respect of conservation and government agencies. Our aim is for developers and planners to see EFG as the ‘go-to’ platform for environmental trades.”
Arriving at a valuation of credits which is fair for both its members and the developer/LPA is a core objective of EFG. In the past, developers have been charged excessive prices for offset projects, while other cases have seen farmers receiving insufficient funding to cover the costs of providing the required environmental services, which is not in the long-term interest of either party.
Thanks to its fair funding structure, the EFG has been endorsed by central government and regularly engages with Natural England, DEFRA and the Environment Agency at the highest level.
As a result, it was recently highlighted in the government’s Green Finance Strategy as a model for how farmers can help meet national targets for clean water, biodiversity recovery and carbon net zero.
Forty-four farms within the EFG have already completed biodiversity baseline audits using Natural England’s Biodiversity Metric. This was match-funded by DEFRA and carried out by a team of qualified ecologists.
EFG are also in the process of completing a catchment-wide feasibility of all suitable locations for nutrient offset solutions from its members. This is enabling the identification of a wide range of deliverable environmental projects on the farms with a calculated number of biodiversity units or nutrient credits, giving developers ready-to-go options, suitable for a variety of offset requirements.
In addition, EFG is developing temporary nutrient reduction solutions, using cover cropping or fallow-land management on farmland to unlock housebuilding in the short term. These schemes generate bridging credits for developers while they wait for longer-term offset schemes such as wetlands to be constructed.
Simon Packer, director of Turley planning consultancy, said: “The EFG is a very interesting and encouraging initiative. There was an increase in nutrient mitigation schemes in the Hampshire/Wiltshire area a couple of years ago, but the credits available are rapidly being consumed and I’m not convinced there is sufficient alternative capacity coming through.”
“I can also see strong evidence of increased demand for the kind of off-site biodiversity offset solutions EFG can deliver.”
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