A few days ago Natural England put the list of 20 short-listed areas that have been proposed as Nature Improvement Areas onto their website and apparently didn’t tell anyone. And Defra didn’t tell anyone either it seems. How odd? It’s like not mentioning the penultimate episode of Strictly Come Dancing.
Perhaps it’s because this is only the beginning of the end, as this list represents the sift of 76 proposals down to 20, en route to the ‘winning’ 12 that Defra has stretched its meagre resources to fund. Have a look at the list and see whether you can pick the winning 12 and the unlucky 8. Who is the Jason Donovan and which is a real Lulu?
Will Defra Minister Richard Benyon be hoping that the panel selects the Marlborough Downs close to his Newbury constituency and will his boss the Secretary of State Caroline Spelman be hoping for the selection of the Warwickshire, Coventry and Solihull NIA or perhaps the Birmingham and Black Country NIA near her Meriden constituency? Personally, I guess I live near the Nene Valley NIA although I have no idea whether the project is up the valley, down the valley or almost on my doorstep. We’ll all have to wait and see, and we may be disappointed.
And that’s the point – already the 76 applications for some government funding have been reduced to just 20 and there is more disappointment ahead for eight more areas. The ‘greenest government ever‘ has only allocated a little over £7.5m for this new initiative at a time when Eric Pickles can magic £250m to be able to announce the return of weekly bin collections at the Tory party conference (a point made very well by the RSPB’s Martin Harper in his blog). If you were on the panel deciding the successful bids you might even omit those near Ministers’ constituencies to make a point!
If 12 successful bids will share £7.5m then the whole 76 might have cost up to £50m but the government thinks that a return to weekly bin collections is better value for money than protecting the natural environment it seems. Is it, could it be, a very expensive bid to clear up after Ministers drop their papers in to bins?
Without more information than is available to this blog we can’t possibly tell whether the £7.5+m is going to help set up 12 fantastic areas or is woefully inadequate – just because there’s that much on offer for 12 sites and people are competing for it doesn’t mean that it will do much good but we will have to wait and see what happens on that score.
I gather that unsuccessful bids have recently received rather curt rejection letters and Paul Wilkinson, Head of Living Landscapes for the Wildlife Trusts tells me that ‘Defra appears to have no real strategy for what happens next‘ as far as lengthening the list of NIAs is concerned.
The least that should happen, and the Wildlife Trusts are pushing for this, is that NIAs should be mentioned in a revised National Planning Policy Framework document. The Wildlife Trusts suggest the following wording:
‘Planning policies should:
‘Identify, map and safeguard components of local ecological networks, including: core areas (international, national and local sites of importance for biodiversity); buffers; features of the landscape that may act as corridors or stepping stones; and opportunities (including Nature Improvement Areas) for restoring the wildlife value of land and the recovery of priority species.’
And this would help to meet the very first recommendation of the ‘Lawton report‘ which was welcomed so warmly by Defra when it was published about 13 months ago. That recommendation was:
Recommendation 1. Local authorities should ensure that ecological networks, including areas for restoration, are identified and protected through local planning. Government should support local authorities in this role by clarifying that their biodiversity duty includes planning coherent and resilient ecological networks.
Let’s see whether Defra have the clout to make that recommendation stick or has it already been binned and taken away on the orders of Mr Pickles?
Whoever the eventual winners are in this series of ‘Strictly Come Landscape Scale Nature Conservation’, the Wildlife Trusts are right to push for a commitment for future episodes to delight the nation, naturally.
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I ‘googled’ my local one and found nothing! I went to Natural England’s web site and found nothing! If it is a ‘Strictly’ system then the public should be able to vote for the ones they want and then I guarantee my local one will win hands down. But it is in the hands of DEFRA. The same people crawling on their bellies trying to hold onto their jobs. Is it time to get this government out?
John – it is perhaps time to get this government out but I didn’t vote to get them in in the first place. Actually, i don’t think there is anything wrong with the bids being confidential but I wonder what would happen if they were put to the vote democratically. Interesting idea isn’t it?
No no no no no! Just because lots of people vote for something doesn’t mean it’s right, or that it’s the best thing: look, for instance, at Strictly Come Dancing (!) or, to continue another theme of Mark’s blogs, at the weird notion that the Forestry Commission is the only organisation that should be allowed to manage our woodland.
Democracy is fine but we need some leadership, and decisions based on knowledge, not just on popular appeal.
Back to NIAs, some of these projects (and indeed some of the original 76 proposals) will go ahead and be funded through other means, as is already happening with some of the Wildlife Trusts’ Living Landscapes and the RSPB’s Futurescapes. But just think what we could achieve with a fraction of the cost of weekly bin collections for those too lazy to reduce their household waste output, or indeed a fraction of the CAP fund.
Liked almost all your blog Mark.This outcome though is no different to what we always have had from politicians all my life,promises that mean nothing.
The only thing where I feel you are absolutely wrong is in thinking that things would be different with a different government,oh come on they were all on the gravy train and nothing seperates them.