A key factor influencing the delivery of this plan is funding.

The vision of the Biodiversity Action Programme will only be delivered through appropriate policy context, political will, strong partnerships and sufficient resources. Financial resources are needed to deliver the work identified in the programme and to sustain the benefits arising from these actions.

Having declared an Ecological Emergency, Warwick District Council is committed to exploring all reasonable funding options to deliver the ambitions of the Biodiversity Action Programme and fulfil strategic goals in the Council’s Corporate Strategy to enhance biodiversity in the district. We recognise that enhancing biodiversity on our land and across the district will require the right staff resources and skills, as well as direct investment in habitats.

We will therefore look to increase direct Council spend for biodiversity by utilising and refocusing existing budgets and resources to support biodiversity improvements (for example delivering further biodiversity benefits through the grounds maintenance contract), and by prioritising biodiversity in our financial strategy and in our annual budget setting processes.

We recognise that direct Council funding alone cannot support all areas of work required to deliver the Biodiversity Action Programme. It is therefore critical that different funding avenues are explored and secured through partnerships with public and private sector partners and through grant funding opportunities.

Biodiversity net gain (BNG) and other emerging nature markets provide key opportunities for investment in nature and for delivering parts of the programme. A number of actions in the action plan to 2030 have been developed to ensure that Warwick District Council maximises these opportunities.

Fortunately, we’re already in a strong position on generating funding through nature markets having proactively worked with Warwickshire County Council to be a national leader in biodiversity offsetting (and more latterly biodiversity net gain) through the planning system.

This early engagement into natural capital investment has unlocked the realisation that some markets are limited and therefore a suite of potential funding streams is required. Alongside this we will seek to embed biodiversity as a key criterion in the assessment of Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) schemes to maximise the biodiversity benefits that those projects can bring.

Appendix 2 provides an overview of previous and ongoing work undertaken by Warwick District in collaboration with partners to access nature markets for the purpose of biodiversity enhancement. It is anticipated that this appendix will be updated regularly as new guidance associated with the Environment Act 2021, biodiversity net gain (BNG), ‘stacking’ and other Natural Capital Investment strategies is published.

Key funding streams to implement the Biodiversity Action Programme are expected to include:

• Direct Council spending where value for money and delivery of corporate priorities can be achieved
• Utilisation of existing  service  budgets by reframing the way these are used to take account of impacts on biodiversity and opportunities for biodiversity enhancement
• Identification of Warwick District Council owned land that could be taken forward for biodiversity enhancement through developer-funded biodiversity net gain (BNG) as a funding mechanism
• Warwickshire County Council led biodiversity credits (developer funded annual or one-off payments for generating biodiversity units at off-site locations)
• Warwickshire Local Authority Natural Capital Investment
• Warwickshire Ecosystem Service Markets (existing and emerging) such as carbon, air quality, water quality, water neutrality, nutrient neutrality, flood alleviation and social prescribing. To include opportunities for ‘stacking’ where multiple types of credit can be sold for different ecosystem services on the same piece of land to produce multiple streams of income (e.g. selling both carbon and water quality credits from the same area of woodland)
• Other public grants (e.g. Defra, Heritage Lottery Fund, etc. where applicable)
• Partnerships (e.g. funding streams available to Warwickshire County Council and town and parish councils to achieve common biodiversity goals in the district)
• Corporate Social Responsibility Environmental payments
• Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) – there are many competing demands for CIL but biodiversity should be a key criterion in the assessment of CIL schemes and be given significant weight in decision making
• Section 106 payments
• Charitable organisations (where applicable e.g. Esmée Fairbairn).