Ecology and green space
consultants for
planning, development and property
*Over 200+ companies helped | 10+ years in industry
Ensure your project's environmental sign-off with accredited surveys.
Industry leaders
Experienced team of 20+ in house ecologists
Providing a responsible, high quality service from a professional team.
Ethos is a multi-disciplinary environmental planning consultancy providing specialist advice to inform decision making for planning and development. Based in the World Heritage Site of Bath, Ethos works across the UK on a range of projects from local community initiatives to major housing and regeneration developments.
MEET THE TEAMSERVICES
Our Services
Start your next project with expert environmental surveys, consultations, and analytics.
Full environmental surveys for your next project
Let's work together! Get in touch with the team today to discuss your project.
Contact the teamTECHNOLOGY
Receive accurate assessments of your development site with industry standard technology
At Ethos we continually look for ways to use new technology within our work, and are always looking for products and partners to help achieve this.
Responsive, high quality service
Commercial objectives come first
Ensuring effective communication
Clear and actionable advice
Facilitating environmental protection
Hit your legislative requirements
OUR ETHOS
We work with you directly to deliver the right outcomes for your project
Ethos’ success is based on effective
communication amongst our team and with our clients. When you work with us, we will
appoint a lead project manager as your main point of contact to pro-actively ensure you are kept up to date with any survey findings, issues and opportunities as they
arise throughout the project.
If your unable to contact your personal project manager at any time, another member of the team will always be there for
support and to respond to any queries as they arise.
LEARN MORE ABOUT ETHOS
Looking for BNG units?
Our focus is on providing clients with accurate BNG assessments and maximising the
opportunities for delivering on-site BNG. However, there are occasions when an off-site solution
is needed.
Ethos can advise on the best off-site solutions for your project, helping you
identify potential offset land or identifying off-site BNG providers. Our priority is to find you
the most cost effective solution so your BNG obligations are delivered in the most
commercially favourable way.
HOW WE INCREASE YOUR BNG UNITS
We've helped 200+ companies with their environmental sign off
We have built an extensive and well-established client list over the years, developing personal relationships and mutual professional respect with our most loyal clients.
The field of ecology is fraught with timing constraints for surveys, as well as policy and legislative issues, all of which can significantly impact project timelines, costs, and designs. By working together, we can minimise the frustrations that often arise from ecological requirements in projects.
*See the results and outcomes we've had for our clients
Personally asigned project managers for your business
Working with Ethos, you will be assigned a dedicated project manager to serve as your primary point of contact. Many of our team have been with Ethos for several years with established client bases. We understand the importance of continuity, so if your project manager is unavailable, another team member will step in to assist.
FREQUENT QUESTIONS
Now is the time to start professionally planning
Have a read of some of our FAQs to learn more about how we operate and the ways we can help.
If you still have a question, please get in touch and we'll do our best to help out.
Contact The Team*A team member will respond to your query ASAP.
Certain habitat and protected species surveys are restricted to specific times of the year. Generally, planning for surveys between April and October (inclusive) (and in some cases, winter surveys as well) will ensure you're on track. However, it's essential to contact us for detailed advice and remember to plan ahead. You can download our survey calendar here.
To validate a planning application, you must submit an:
- Ecological Impact Assessment (EcIA)
with results from all habitat and protected species surveys. Local Authorities often reject applications with only 'preliminary ecological assessments' (PEAs) due to insufficient information. Therefore, it’s essential to plan ahead and align survey windows with your planning schedule.
Additionally for validation, you will need a:
- Biodiversity Net Gain Assessment
- Habitat Management and Monitoring Plan (HMMP)
- (Some projects) Shadow Habitat Regulations Assessment (sHRA).
Our ecology team works across a range of projects including householder, residential, commercial and education.
We have a varied project portfolio including:
- Barn conversions
- Small and major housing schemes
- Commercial development
- wind turbines
- solar farms
- schools and colleges
This gives us a varied and interesting project portfolio which we enjoy. We also work with landowners to advise on BNG opportunities and land management.
Our Green Space teams’ expertise is on open space, play and green infrastructure projects. The majority of our work is for local authorities, helping them with strategic planning in these areas. We also advise private clients where open space studies are required as part of planning applications.
Ethos can advise you on the BNG requirements for your project. In our experience, it is best to establish your likely BNG position as soon as possible, preferably before you have even acquired the land.
At an early stage we can complete desktop assessment to determine the likely habitats present and if there are any likely BNG constraints. Following on from this we can undertake the necessary habitat surveys to provide you with a metric which will set out your BNG position.
Should your project result in a BNG loss we can advise on design options and ecological enhancements to seek to reduce this loss. If your scheme maintains a loss, we can advise on off site options for securing BNG credits. Ethos are also able to produce the necessary BNG metrics, reports and habitat management plans to support your planning application.