Geovation Spring 2026

Are BNG sites
keeping their promises?

Community-powered habitat monitoring that tells councils whether biodiversity net gain is real — not just paperwork.

Urban Biome Ltd
Reuben Forster & Manon Dangelser
Bristol, England
01
The Problem

BNG requires 30-year monitoring.
Councils have no way to do it.

30 yrs
Habitat monitoring required per development site under BNG (mandatory Feb 2024)
0.66
Average ecologists per English council. Most have zero.
£3bn
Projected BNG habitat investment by 2035 — going unverified.
330+
Local Planning Authorities legally required to monitor BNG delivery.
"The Committee cannot evaluate progress against urban greening targets because there is no systematic monitoring of urban habitats."
— Climate Change Committee to Parliament, 2025
02
The Solution

BNG Monitor

A traffic light for every BNG site. Green, amber, or red — backed by evidence.

Harbourside Phase 2
Wildflower meadow establishing as planned. 12 species documented, pollinator activity confirmed. 3 volunteer visits this quarter.
On track — Year 2 milestone met
Temple Quarter Block C
Volunteer photos show poor sedum establishment. Only 4 species found (target: 8+). Satellite NDVI confirms declining trend.
Watch — re-visit scheduled
Bedminster Retail Park
Hedgerow not planted per HMMP. Community photos confirm bare ground. Developer notified.
Failing — intervention required

One dashboard. All BNG sites. Community volunteers with smartphones document habitat condition — species counts, photos, drawn extents. Satellite fills the gaps between visits. OS data provides the spatial framework. The council gets evidence they can't produce themselves.

03
How It Works

Three signals. One answer.

01
Community
Volunteers with smartphones photograph habitat, count species, draw planting bed extents with AR, log fauna. iPhone LiDAR for structure. Three data channels per visit: photos, manual classification, free text.
Primary signal
→
02
Satellite
Sentinel-2 NDVI every 5 days fills the gaps between volunteer visits. Automated change detection flags sites that need re-documenting.
Gap-fill
→
03
OS Framework
NGD Sites provides the polygon for every functional site. Enhanced Land Cover for habitat types. Every sighting is binned to its site.
Authoritative
→
✓
Compliance status
Per-site green/amber/red. Undocumented sites visible. 30-year evidence trail. Annual compliance reports.
Evidence-grade
04
Competition

No one monitors habitat health.

Existing tools manage paperwork or require expensive professionals. None verify whether habitats are actually thriving.

BNG Monitor Verna Linckia BNGAI Consultancy
Satellite monitoring ✓ — — ✓ —
Citizen science data Only us ✓ — — — —
AI condition scoring ✓ — — ~ —
OS data integration ✓ ~ ~ — ~
Works without ecologist ✓ ✓ — ✓ —
Ground-truth verification ✓ — ✓ — ✓
Annual cost per council £3K £10K £1.2K+/user — £300–800/day
05
Traction

Built and deployed. Not a concept.

143
GI assets documented
Smartphone-documented habitat assessments with geotagged photos, species IDs, and drawn extents across Bristol.
6
Trained volunteers
Community observers with smartphones generating the ground-truth data councils need but cannot produce. Anyone can document a site.
97%
Pipeline efficiency
Satellite processing pipeline live. Sentinel-2 to Cloud Optimised GeoTIFF at 97% storage reduction.
125
TDAG transcripts analysed
Urban tree species database built from public Trees & Design Action Group expert talks — structured into searchable intelligence.
<£40
Monthly infrastructure
Full serverless stack on Cloudflare. National-scale satellite analysis at startup budget.
3
Production tools live
Community Sightings tool, satellite explorer, and GI opportunity engine all deployed in Bristol. Ready for NGD Site binning.
Validated with Woodland Trust Knowle West Media Centre Live Graft UWE Bristol University of Bristol
06
Market

Four forces. One window.

TAM
£3bn
SAM
600+
SOM
5
Total addressable market
£3bn UK BNG compliance market by 2035. 330+ LPAs legally required to monitor habitat delivery for 30 years per site.
Serviceable available market
600+ councils with climate emergencies. 48 LNRS areas. Developers needing urban BNG evidence.
Year 1 target
5 South West councils + 20 site assessments = £55K revenue.
Feb 2024
BNG mandatory. Every development needs 30-year monitoring.
2025
CCC tells Parliament it cannot evaluate urban greening. No dataset exists.
2025
Planning & Infrastructure Act introduces Environmental Delivery Plans.
Now
Free Sentinel data + serverless cloud = national analysis for <£40/month.
07
Business Model

Enterprise BNG compliance SaaS.

Recurring
£250/month per council
BNG Monitor dashboard. Community observation feeds, satellite gap-fill, per-site compliance tracking, annual evidence reports. Target: 5 councils Year 1.
Per-project
£500–2K/site assessment
BNG site assessments replacing £2–5K consultant visits. Community-documented baseline + AI analysis + satellite supplement. Target: 20 assessments Year 1.
Key insight: Councils already charge developers BNG monitoring fees. The money exists — it's spent on occasional consultant visits. BNG Monitor replaces sporadic expensive checks with continuous cheap monitoring.
Year 1
£55K
5 councils + 20 assessments + £20K grant
Year 2
£150–200K
15 councils + 60 assessments + Pro tier
Year 3
£500K+
National rollout + developer self-service
08
Team

One builds the tech.
One opens the doors.

Reuben Forster
Co-founder / Technical Lead
15 years in construction and landscaping. Installed SuDS, planted street trees, and watched them die from neglect — the problem isn't planting, it's monitoring. GIS consultant (Ecolazy), designer (Heatherwick Studio). Built the entire platform: Python, Rust, React/Svelte, Cloudflare serverless. Full time.
Manon Dangelser
Co-founder / Strategy & Stakeholder Lead
10 years advising councils on climate resilience. Knows why they can't monitor BNG: no budget, no data, no staff. Chartered Environmentalist (CEnv). Senior Consultant at Arup. Co-authored AUDE Climate Adaptation Guide. Part time — consulting provides domain insight and council relationships.

Founder-problem fit: Reuben has physically installed the green infrastructure that gets forgotten. Manon has written the council strategies that can't be monitored. They built BNG Monitor because they've lived both sides of the gap.

09
The Ask

What Geovation unlocks

🗺
OS Data Access
NGD Sites polygons are the unit every sighting is binned to. Enhanced Land Cover provides habitat type. Without OS: observations with no spatial framework. With OS: every site on the map, every sighting in context.
🤝
Council Network
Mentorship selling to local authorities — our primary customer. Introductions to LPA BNG leads across England.
💷
£20K Grant
Six months to convert Bristol pilot into paying council subscribers. Fund community coordinator, volunteer network growth, and BNG dashboard build.
⚡
National Scaling
City-by-city replication guidance. Tech team support for OS data pipeline. Community volunteer model scales with every new council.
Every smartphone is a sensor. Every volunteer is an ecologist-in-training. BNG Monitor turns community observations into the evidence councils need for 30 years of legal compliance. Geovation provides the spatial framework, council network, and funding to take it national.
Urban Biome Ltd
Company No. 16520770
reuben@urbanbiome.co.uk
Bristol, England
10