Natural England and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) are building new digital services to enable a record of biodiversity net gain sites across England.
Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) is a government flagship policy and will be instrumental in helping to achieve nature’s recovery.? To achieve this aim, Natural England has been working with Defra on the systems, tools and processes that will support mandatory BNG. An important part of this is the three new digital services they have been building:
- Biodiversity Gains Site Register – a rich source of data on validated off-site gains across England.
- A Casework Management System – for the Operator of the Register.
- The Credit Sales Service – to enable developers to purchase statutory credits from the government.
Whilst BNG will be mandatory, this digital work focuses on the people that will be using these systems. This will ensure the services that are built are simple and provide a straightforward journey through the process.?To do this, they want to ensure they are speaking to prospective users so that they can develop services which meet user needs.?They would therefore welcome volunteers to participate in their current user research and prototype testing to enable them to do this.
Sign up
To sign up you must be:
- 18 or older
- live in England
How to sign up
To take part please complete the Expression of Interest form BNG Digital Services Project – Expression of Interest Form (Page 1 of 4) (office.com)
This form will be used to capture your interest in user research and testing for the Biodiversity Net Gain Digital Services Project.
What you??may be asked
Once you’ve signed up, you may be contacted about the following types of research:
- 60 minute remote usability sessions where you will be shown a prototype of the design of the service and your feedback?given
- Diary studies, where they check-in with you a few times over the course of your BNG journey to evaluate your experience, usually via email
- Surveys, where you will be asked to answer a few questions to evaluate your experience
- Speak with you to learn more about user needs from your own perspective
Taking part in research is voluntary. You can always say no to an invitation.
More information
For more information regarding BNG, please take a look at the Biodiversity Net Gain Brochure (blog.gov.uk)