Develop Business Case and Financial Model

Key takeaways

• WBP is based on 100% private finance and is focused on compliance markets (BNG and Nutrient Neutrality) to generate revenue from land-use change.
• The landowners have pooled all of the revenue and costs from the Project into a central fund, with the ability to run in perpetuity and outpace inflationary pressures.
• Lifetime habitat costs of the Project have been estimated through conversations with local eNGOs. Other cost datasets used include the Farm Business Survey (for estimating opportunity cost of the land) and NAAC contracting prices (for time spent by the landowners).
• WBP is taking a phased approach to transforming habitats, so that they can use funds from initial sales of environmental credits as capital funding for habitat creation, to minimize risk to cashflow in the delivery plan and reduce project costs. All habitat works are planned to be delivered by 2027.
• The WBP team – with support from TNC – has created a financial model, which has been made publicly available here, along with a set of instructions here and a tutorial here.
• Beyond compliance markets, the Project has discovered the potential for several other revenue opportunities. These include eco-tourism, a farm shop and café, a market garden and an environmental consultancy.

 

WBP’s Business Plan

Together, the WBP landowners and supportive project partners – including TNC – have created a central business plan that is made up of three major components:

 

1. The Land Plan

The Land Plan has a breakdown of what land parcels are included, what habitat is to be generated over how long, by when and by who, and the permitted activities and uses on that land. The Land Plan is a further, more detailed iteration of the Project’s environmental masterplan, which sets out the overall vision for the landscape (see Milestone 1) and is aligned with the Project’s Habitat Management and Monitoring Plan (see Milestone 3), which took two years to develop.

While all landowners retain ownership of their land and no property transfers are made – an important feature for their collaboration – all committed land is included in the central Land Plan. Legally, the Land Plan is tied into the agreement signed by all landowners as part of the WBP’s Limited Liability Partnership (see Milestone 6).

To spread costs and de-risk WBP’s cashflow, the WBP team plans to deliver the habitat works (initial creation / restoration) in phases, using its immediate nutrient credit sales as initial capital.

WBP’s Land Plan totals ~2000 acres within the Wendling Beck sub-catchment. These acres will be transformed into species-rich grassland, heathlands, scrub, wetlands, woodlands and other habitats, along with the restoration of chalk streams. All initial habitat works due to be completed by 2027.

Figure 1: WBP’s BNG Masterplan

 

2. The Financial Model

In line with the Project’s unified Land Plan, the WBP aimed to build a single financial model that ensures the Project’s delivery is financially viable for all landowners.

When designing the financial model, key questions for the WBP landowners included:

• which income streams and costs of the Project should be aggregated centrally;
• how to allocate costs and incomes to the landowners,
• compensation for time spent by landowners, and opportunity costs of the land they will be putting in across the lifetime of the Project,
• how to ensure the long-term (90+ years) financial viability of delivering the Project,
• how to aggregate revenues to mitigate the inflationary impact of costs and up-front payments.

Ultimately, WBP decided to aggregate all income and costs that are connected to the Land Plan into a central fund with the potential to run in perpetuity. While the landowners are compensated for their time and the opportunity cost of their land, any excess profits are kept within the fund.

This ‘centralised’ approach is designed to ensure that the Project maintains overall profitability – having the necessary funds to meet any unexpected costs and help offset long-term inflation impacts, as the central fund will be interest-bearing. The central fund structure also helps to ensure that no landowner is being burdened with undue costs or excessively profiting at the expense of others.

Figure 2: WBP’s Central Fund Model

 

2a. Estimating Income

WBP’s main revenue sources are the sale of biodiversity units via Biodiversity Net Gain and nutrient credits for nutrient neutrality. The team has created an Excel financial model that is based on its work over the last four years, which it has publicly offered to other project developers to use.

For its BNG income, the Project’s financial model has set an average of £20k per biodiversity unit, resulting in a financial projection of ~£60 million over 30+ years. The team has also worked with consultants and the Local Planning Authority to forecast the likely demand for the specific types of units the Project will offer (see Milestone 4). While some upfront sales are anticipated, the WBP team expects that the majority of its units will be sold over the longer term.

Nutrient credits are estimated to generate a little over £10 million that would commit parcels of land up to 2030 (through temporary credits) or up to 2125 (through permanent credits)[1]. As of June 2025, over 50% of those credits are under contract, and the remainder with firm buyer interest or at Heads of Terms. In total, WBP is generating enough nutrient credits to unlock ~2,000 homes in Norfolk.

While committing land to BNG and Nutrient Neutrality is expected to erode the capital value of the land, the landowners believe the overall revenue will cover this loss of value and also meet expected long-term inflation trends, having consulted with land valuers to assess this. Anderson also says “the structure of the OpCo sitting separately to the land ownership is important – and will give us a platform to aggregate the natural capital value of the land.”

Overall, the WBP landowners have been encouraged by the opportunities to diversify its income streams and new potential partnerships. Smaller income streams include:

• WBP’s ecotourism offering that was set up in 2024, under the Wildscapes brand but fully marketed and managed in-house. As the Project has developed, the landowners have agreed that ecotourism could form an important long-term revenue stream, and have started this investment by putting in the first two cabins for residential stays, experiences and tours of the project to members of the public.

• A natural flood management scheme to build resilience in one of Anglian Water’s (the local water company) nearby assets. This has undergone initial feasibility modelling, business case development and is going through detailed design. It is anticipated that Anglian Water could fund 50% of the capital works for river and floodplain restoration, and the WBP could claim the subsequent BNG watercourse units in exchange for its own contributions.

• Food production – mainly through livestock and regeneratively farmed blackcurrants. Much of the WBP’s habitat establishment relies on different forms of species-rich grassland. WBP plans to introduce livestock at a lower stocking density, which will be introduced after 2030 as a natural habitat management strategy.

• A market garden that was developed in 2024 and is due to open in Summer 2025. This will be closely followed by a farm shop and café / restaurant, alongside a forest school.

• The establishment of an environmental consultancy (Swallowtail Consulting Ltd) to share their expertise and deliver landscape scale transformation to other parts of the country. This is kept as a separate entity to the WBP.

A diagram that sets out the various activities and revenue streams of WBP can be found below:

 

Figure 3: WBP’s Business Activities

 

2b. Estimating Costs

WBP has built up a long-term picture of its costs, which include:

• capital infrastructure (such as fencing),
• habitat creation costs,
• long-term management, maintenance and monitoring,
• potential re-establishment works in case of habitat failure,
• consultancy and legal costs, including contracts (see Milestone 8)
• time spent by the landowners, and
• insurance and administrative costs for the upkeep of the OpCo (see Milestone 6).

Estimates of these costs came from a range of sources.

For example, the landowners of the Project started with their own knowledge to estimate the capital investment, habitat creation and maintenance costs from the different habitats under the ecological masterplan.

These estimated were refined through conversations with ecologists and specialist contractors, such as the Norfolk Wildlife Trust, eCountability, and Norfolk Rivers Trust, the latter offering specialist advice on the riverine habitats. Anderson notes that collaborating with these partners was essential to get a confident picture of long-term habitat costs, which take up the majority of the cost base.

For time spent by the landowners themselves, such as habitat works, it was agreed that they would be compensated on either an agreed time or hectarage basis – often using NAAC contracting rates as guidance. This compensation is separate to the payments made to the landowners for committing their land, and any profits distributed from the LLP (see below).

 

3. The Landowner Payment Terms

There was much discussion as to how any excess profits should be distributed fairly to the landowners while ensuring the WBP can be run in perpetuity.

Ultimately, the Project members decided on a fixed annual payment to landowners committing Project Land based on an average income forgone – around £650 per hectare, per annum – and reviewed using Farm Business Survey data. This is paid only once spade-in-ground works for habitat creation has started.

In addition, the members decided on a way to allocate any profits in a given year, based on a concept called ‘Project Land-Years’, which rewards the landowners for both the amount of land they have entered into habitat works and for how long this land has been in transformation. A table summarising this approach and others considered can be found below:

More information on this approach can be found in Milestone 2.

 

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[1] Temporary credits are used to mitigate nutrient pollution in the short term (typically up to 2030), while permanent credits should be used to mitigate permanently (min 90 years). This distinction was introduced in 2024 when the government mandated wastewater treatment upgrades by 2030 capable of reducing much of the nutrient pollution across England.