Within certain areas of the UK, the issue of nutrient pollution is hindering development, stalling the planning approval process, and providing a new potential income stream for land managers.

Developers in catchments that are deemed to have excessive nitrate or phosphate levels are increasingly required to offset the nutrient leaching that their future development will cause. This offset can be provided by land managers who create new habitat or adopt new management practices, mitigating nutrient leaching, enabling development and providing environmental income for the rural sector.

Land owners and managers within catchments of the recently expanded 74 councils affected by nutrient neutrality have the ability to enter land in to long term woodland or wetland creation agreements to generate nutrient credits. These credits can subsequently be sold to developers so they can discharge their obligations to mitigate excess nutrient pollution. This market place is different to the government backed land stewardship schemes farmers may be familiar with and is instead an example of private finance entering the land management space.

By ceasing agricultural activity and adopting long term and stable land management techniques these sites can have a meaningful effect on downstream water quality provided they are well located. Each site design will be unique but Natural England has suggested that the three key principles for the viability of offset land are: certainty in the land’s mitigation potential, perpetuity (of over 80 years) in the offset and enforceability of the mitigation measures.

In order to help document these requirements, the Environment Act has introduced Conservation Covenants to help record and enforce long term environmental commitments.

Nutrient credits can be brokered via Savills Environment Exchange.