Natural England is a failing organisation. It is no longer a champion for the natural environment and it is no longer a leader in environmental thinking and it is no longer doing its job.
The statutory nature conservation agency in England is now highly politicised (ghastly word for a ghastly impact) and no longer trusted or admired by its NGO colleagues and former partners.
No cards please.
If you disagree feel free to mention all of the recent achievements of NE for nature conservation as a comment here.
PS It’s also Theresa May’s birthday on Sunday.
[registration_form]
One significant symptom (or cause – a moot point) of NE’s uselessness is the way they now call all other conservation organisations – not just the NGOs, even the other Defra funded ones – “customers” not “partners”. The choice of language speaks volumes.
I have more dealings with the EA, but I’m sure the same routine will apply. My impression is of an organisation with a lot of good environmentalists trying to do a decent job with their hands tied behind their backs. My direct experience of many (but certainly not all) in the upper echelons of career civil servants that lead these lowly environmentalists is that they will do pretty much anything for another notch up the greasy pole. I was recently talking to someone from SEPA who said that even the top level managers in EA cannot make decisions without it going circa 5 levels of management upwards first. I have no reason to disbelieve this. So much for the Tories cracking down on bureaucracy and red tape. So many of them spend too much time behind the computer in an ivory tower, while the practical, grounded people with any semblance of local knowledge become more like the Hen Harrier. Woefully endangered.
Oh, and many happy retu……. on second thoughts, Happy Birthday Theresa.
Firstly I will declare an interest in that I’m an official NE, NNR volunteer, but I have never been employed by NE.
I think it would be helpful for Mark to declare what he means. Natural England has many excellent and dedicated staff, many of which are likely to disagree with the political control etc, themselves, but who cannot speak out. What Mark seems to mean is the political control of NE, which actually began long before NE existed and even when the then Environment Secretary Nicholas Ridley split up the old NCC days after their Chief Scientist Derek Ratcliffe retired, because he’d been a thorn in the wealthy establishment side (stopping their cushy tax breaks planting conifer forestry on the Flo country and other peat bogs)
The political interference goes back way before this. I was very reliably informed that the Tories completely sabotaged what became the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act, when the Thatcher government got elected in 1979. It was intended to be ground breaking legislation, but my source, who was very highly placed in conservation at the time and a personal friend of Derek Ratcliffe told me that immediately the Tories got into power, the big titled landowners who were very influential in the Conservative Party immediately started heavy lobbying to get the proposed measured to protect SSSI’s severely watered down, and that the 1981 W&C Act was a pale shadow of that intended.
In no way is this meant to justify this political control, but similar criticisms can be made against the NGOs. During the failed attempt to sell off the Forestry Commission by Cameron’s government, it later emerged that the NGOs in a secret deal with the government had drawn up a shopping list of jewel in the crown woodland the FC owned. This was not about protecting this land or conservation, as it was already protected. It was about self-promotion, by claiming to own key Ancient Woodland. Only at the very last minute did the NGOs step in against the attempted sell off of the FC. And this was only after the grass roots revolt which revealed major public opposition to the plans.
I feel it would be much more constructive to shine the spotlight onto this political meddling.
As a footnote I will point out that this political interference is very old. At university I was doing a module on conservation legislation etc, and it’s history. I decided to look into it. One of the things I tried to highlight was the dumbing down when the NCC was split up and became English Nature. When I used the academic library and researched the governing board of English Nature, and before that the NCC, I was shocked to find that the majority of it were titled landowners, and believe it or not gamekeepers. They outnumbered the academics. I remember thinking what the hell qualifies someone to oversee the statutory conservation body when they are someone’s head gamekeeper. There must have been a 1001 much better qualified people.
In other words right from the very beginning the establishment have been trying to control our statutory conservation bodies so they don’t step on their vested interests. Sure it’s got worse, but don’t pretend there was any golden era, or the NGOs haven’t been compromised themselves. We need honesty, not my side is more pious than yours type thinking.
SteB – you don’t rise to the challenge of naming a single great thing that NE has done recently.
Your argument is that there are some good people in NE but they can’t do a good job because they are poorly managed – that supports my contention pretty strongly.
Your point about NGOs being just as bad may or may not be true but it isn’t very relevant – I can take my money away from any NGO – I can’t withdraw my taxes from a government agency.
Mark – You’ve moved the goal posts. You didn’t ask anyone to “name a single great thing that NE has done recently”. You actually said “If you disagree feel free to mention all of the recent achievements of NE for nature conservation”. I didn’t feel a need to answer such a question because self-evidently NE are directly involved in a whole mass of ongoing conservation work. You must surely be aware of this because of your former job.
I started off by saying “I think it would be helpful for Mark to declare what he means”.
You say NE is a “failing organization” and is “is no longer a leader in environmental thinking”. The tacit implications in your assertions are that there was some sort of “golden age” when NE was “leader in environmental thinking”, and when it wasn’t “a failing organization”.
Surely you must have notice how this particularly nasty and dishonest government has interfered in countless government departments etc, from the NHS onwards, compromising the operation all of them, and ensuring they implement the unstated agenda of this government? There’s nothing unique about the way in which the government has hamstrung NE. What these supposed austerity cuts were about is not merely cutting public spending. They were a tool to bring all these organizations to heel, and to ensure they do the bidding of the government, ignoring inconvenient duties. It’s blackmail to implement the Tory’s hidden agenda to re-structure our society. Do what we say, or we will destroy your department with massive extra cuts.
Natural England are the same as other government departments.
Let’s take the NHS as a good analogy. Is it the fault of the NHS that they are struggling to do their job under this government? In other words, do you not think it is more about the MO of the government, rather than these public organizations are struggling to do their job?
My main problem is that your assertion implies that somehow NE could act differently. When actually NE is failing to do it’s work as a statutory conservation body because this is exactly how this government and it’s vested interest backers want it to be.
Plus you bought NGOs into this by saying “[NE is]no longer trusted or admired by its NGO colleagues”. It is entirely relevant if these NGOs are limited by their own need survive, and therefore compromise how they act to be able to survive, but don’t realise it’s the same for other organizations. After all in the attempted Forestry Commission sell off, the NGOs were acting in their own interests, and not the interests of conservation or the public interest.
Can you explain how NE could behave any differently with this controlling and threatening government, who’s primary aim is to create fear by threatening further budget cuts? Exactly how can NE stand up to the government in such a scenario? After all a primary purpose of Brexit is to stop the EU or European Court overruling the UK (Conservative) government, when it is doing the bidding of vested interests like the big landowners.
Just saying NE is a “failing organization” without examining the context is not helpful.
To solve a problem, you have to understand what the problem is. Therefore I suggest why NE is like this. Vague assertions about the management isn’t helpful as it suggest with different managers they could act differently. I say with such a coercive government, it would make no difference.
SteB – you still haven’t named any of the really good things that NE has done.
This blog has given quite a few examples of how poor NE (which isn’t a government department – it’s an ndpb) is these days; failure to address Hen Harrier persecution, or even comment on it, or even admit that it happens until forced to do so, or even disclose the results of its study of c15 years? Poor progress on SSSI notification and the introduction of Gate Zero. Failure to come clean on whether it issued a licence for gull culls in the Bowland Fells SPA. But there are others…
And yes, I do remember what NE used to be like when I worked for the RSPB – the change is dramatic and has been engineered from the top of NE as much as imposed from Defra.
It is impossible to imagine those greats of the past, notably of course Derek Ratcliffe, allowing state nature conservation to be so limp, so compliant and so irrelevant.
Again Mark you talk about me not naming any of the “really good things that NE has done”, when self-evidently this is not what you said in your first comment. Secondly, this was only a caveat if you disagreed. In no way have a disagreed that Natural England has been hampered in doing it’s job. Are you really trying to claim that NE has not been doing any conservation work?
My point is that the statutory regulation bodies have been compromised since the very beginning. Additionally the Tories have been trying to neuter the power of the statutory conservation bodies since they first split up the NCC in 1989. The very purpose of this action was to make the regulatory conservation bodies less powerful, and to give Conservative ministers more power over them. It is these mechanisms allowing greater government control over NE, which have allowed them to neuter it. As these mechanisms exist to control NE, the way they operate is at the whim of the government in power.
How do you think this government would have dealt with a Derek Ratcliffe type figure standing up to them? I suggest he’d have been out of a job within months.
You say you remember what NE used to be like when you were conservation director for the RSPB. But you retired from the post in 2011, less than a year after we got a Conservative PM, and before the Tories really got a chance to get NE under their heel.
Remember the Tories just axed bodies like the Sustainable Development Commission (in the year of your retirement from the RSPB), and got rid of anyone or anything likely to oppose them. They were planning on getting rid of much of our environmental regulation as “red tape”.
You claim that this was nothing to do with it being imposed by Defra. This would be the same Defra who ignored all the scientific evidence on Badger culling. The same Defra who refused a Freedom of Information request, as in the instance of Badger culling, it should be seen as one and the same as the NFU, who of course are not a public body, and are therefore exempt from FOI applications. Do you really think this position has not been imposed, given this?
I’m as critical as anyone about this government interference. I have personal experience of this over-cautiousness. The only point of disagreement I have with you is whether Natural England management could do anything about it. I suggest that NE management know very well that if they were to resist government plans for it, that they would get their budget severely slashed. This is the constant implied threat – “do what we want, don’t oppose us, or your budget will be slashed and you won’t even be able to do your basic conservation tasks.
I’m sure you must have come across this dilemma when you worked for the RSPB i.e. where certain action, which was moral and right, could lead to damage to the organization, which could hamper the conservation work of the RSPB. This is after all the real mechanism which forced many conservation bodies to work with or be uncritical of shooting interests, because they were very powerful. As you are well aware this is a constant dilemma for all those engaged in conservation.
The choice of logo is somehow symptomatic of what the organisation has become. It doesn’t give the sense that this is an organisation committed to protecting the nation’s biodiversity.
I too believe that you are very hard on Natural England, similar critisims were levelled at the Broads Authority in Norfolk.
We all know that none of these organizations are perfect but if you half realized how the employees working in public service have their hands tied behind their backs when it comes to dealing with government and be they tory, Labour or Lib Dems there are few votes to be gained from environmental matters. Add this to the fact that they are screwed down where cash is concerned, plus as the above comment notes, a good proportion of MP’s are landowners and “hunters” and public employees are totally inhibited on voicing their concerns then there is a “perfect storm” and is little wonder that our ewnvironment becomes trashed.
Ben – thank you, but your points are merely supporting my contention that NE is a failing organisation.
And I can remember how NE used to be – not that long ago. Things have certainly got far worse since 2010 but that doesn’t mean that NE is not a failing organisation does it?
You ducked the challenge of naming some great things that NE has done recently…
If, as you say, the employees of NE have their hands tied behind their backs and have had their cash and other resources pared to the bone then surely those are symptoms of a failing organisation. The accusation is not that NE is entirely staffed by people who are incompetent or who don’t care but that as an organisation it is failing to protect our nation’s wildlife from the steady erosion it is suffering. Most people would agree that the reasons for its failure stem from its political masters clipping its wings and not from any dereliction of duty by the staff on the ground.
Just to be clear, and I think this echoes what Mark has said, no-one is saying that NE doesn’t have a lot of committed staff at ground level.
But the higher up the chain of command you go the less impressed I am. NE is a failing organisation precisely because its best staff have their hands tied and mouths gagged. Its senior staff have become obsessed with perfecting a miasma of risk adverse paper processes as a way of avoiding actually doing anything, which would be politically inconvenient.
NCC/EN/ even early NE weren’t perfect, but they did speak out more and deliver more. I can remember when they were allies and partners, when they did good stuff, and when they stopped bad people doing bad stuff, even if they were never as outspoken as we might have wanted them to be in our dreams. Now, some good site management aside, it feels like at best they are irrelevant and often they are just in the way.
Let me simplify this.
Does Mark think Natural England is a “failing organization” because of:
1) Internal management failures which could be remedied with different managers.
2) Or because we have a coercive threatening government which has slashed the budget of Natural England, as with many public organizations, and has used this fear to coerce NE into going along with it’s ideology.
Does Mark think that Natural England could have done things differently under this government, and if so how?
Remember, Mark highlights that Natural England will be 11 years old on Sunday. By absolutely no coincidence for nearly 7 1/2 of those 11 years we’ve had a Conservative PM. One of the first acts of the government David Cameron headed government was to attempt to sell off our National Nature Reserves.
Is it really a coincidence that ideologically this government has wanted a powerless hands off conservation regulatory body?
SteB – what are NE’s achievements?
1) and 2)
You do go on Mark.
SteBs reasoned comments get my vote every time. What are most peoples achievement? pretty little at the end of the day.
Whatever is done to try and sustain the natural environment is almost certain to fail in the end with mankind raging across the globe.
Ben – blimey! Better close them down completely then if all is hopeless.
But it isn’t hopeless. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.
I’m not saying do nothing. I am saying attack those responsible, and not soft targets who can’t speak back.
SteB – which I didn’t. You’re getting over-excited.
Mark, it’s not me getting over-excited. I was just trying to make a point. I didn’t even really disagree with what you said (I couldn’t disagree, because I had no idea what you actually meant). I clearly said “I think it would be helpful for Mark to declare what he means.”
You originally said:
“The statutory nature conservation agency in England is now highly politicised (ghastly word for a ghastly impact) and no longer trusted or admired by its NGO colleagues and former partners.”
I had actually no idea what you were suggesting. Did you mean that the management was politicised? Were you talking about increased political control by government? I had no idea.
Likewise, when I’ve seen you being critical of Natural England previously I didn’t know what you actually meant. Again it wasn’t clear if you were suggesting the problems with Natural England were with the internal management of Natural England, or the government’s management of Natural England. In fact I’m still not very clear on this, and I don’t even know if you’ve actually thought through what you mean.
Instead of clarifying the matter you went off on a tangent demanding that I name “a single great thing that NE has done recently”. Something you repeated 3 times in total in various forms. Yet this was not what you originally said in your blog where you actually said “If you disagree feel free to mention all of the recent achievements of NE for nature conservation as a comment here.”
1) I wasn’t necessarily disagreeing with you, because as I explained here, I didn’t really know what you meant, which was why I said it would be helpful if you clarified what you meant. If I wasn’t actually disagreeing with you, because I didn’t really know what you meant, they there was no need for me to list Natural England’s achievements.
2) As Natural England directly manages quite a number of reserves, including National Nature Reserves (I’m a volunteer at one so I’ve got a pretty good idea what they actually do in terms of conservation work) I thought it was weird that you were asking me to “mention all of the recent achievements of NE for nature conservation”, when self-evidently as NE are directly managing quite a number of nature reserves, doing primary survey work etc, restoring habitat, it was a bit obvious what NE “recent achievements of NE for nature conservation” were i.e. all I had to do was to list all their habitat restoration projects. But this is a bit pointless because undoubtedly you should be aware of a lot of it.
This is why I was baffled. As I tried to explain in my email to you, if I start acting like a self-appointed spokesperson for NE, listing what they have done, I could find myself in serious trouble with them, as I have no authorisation to do this.
It wasn’t me avoiding anything. You were getting over-excited and demanding I answer questions, you hadn’t even previously asked, and seemed to be presuming I was saying something I wasn’t actually saying. You were demanding I act like an apologist for Natural England, when I wasn’t at any point trying justify their position over many matters. I was simply trying to make the point that they had many dedicated staff doing primary conservation work. The other point I was making was that the policy was likely as much to do with government pressure as it was to do with NE management objectives.
When I am not sure what someone is saying, or where I’m not sure where they are coming from, I ask them and try to lay out the facts as I see them. I don’t like to put words in people’s, which is why I asked you to clarify what you were saying, rather than me trying too hard to second guess it.
Mark I asked a number of very specific questions to clarify what you meant. They weren’t trick questions, and you didn’t even acknowledge what I asked.
SteB – crikey!
Enough already! Two bald men arguing over a comb!
“You’re getting over-excited”
Didn’t you realise this would happen? I thought you read the Gaianurd …
Mark: it’s crucially important that you keep speaking up and shouting out about the failures of NE and indeed other organisations as well.
We desperately need your bold voice and your willingness to put your head way up above the parapet.
That everyone doesn’t agree with you all the time is to be expected…they can and should express their views openly her and elsewhere. But it is only because you speak out so boldly in the first place that we even have a debate on these topics and that so many of us have become so much more aware of the huge range of essentially political problems confronting us as environmentalists and nature conservationists.
Fortunately you don’t need encouraging (but do please keep it up anyway!)
Nick – I fully agree with Mark about the failures of Natural England when it comes to confronting the illegal persecution of birds of prey, and other species like Lesser Black-backed Gulls. In no way have I justified this.
What I was saying is that our statutory conservation bodies are too easily compromised by government pressure. Mark seems to mistakenly think they could stand up to the government if they wanted. No they couldn’t. If NE tried standing up to the government, the government would just vindictively slash their budget even more than they already have. That is what this government does to public bodies which won’t comply. With Badger culling, the government just disbanded scientific committees that wouldn’t go along with it, or just by-passed them.
SteB – yes they could. In many ways, none of which seem to be happening.
I don’t disagree with what you say Mark. I hope this means I don’t have to come up with some NE success story as you’ve asked other posters to do!!!!! My point would be what is your point. I guess most people here agree with you, NE has been hobbled by it’s political masters? Who would expect anything else from the Tories anyway. The thing is what is to be done about it?
The important thing is to get a grip of how NE works as a Government body. As a basic premise I’m sure most of us accept that the ground troops consist largely of genuine and professional nature conservationists, and the real problem is hierarchical. It’s the appointees at the top of the organisation that are under direct control by Ministers, and of course have been selected for the posts on the basis of their willing compliance and ability to be ruthless, even to the point of intimidating the staff below them. My experience is mainly with Scottish Natural Heritage, but I’m sure the basic internal culture within NE is similar. At the end of the day, the politicians call the shots, and we all know which side the present Government is on. It is clear to me that Natural England, to use that well-worn phrase, is not fit for purpose. It’s hard to see how this can be rectified without radical political change, but fortunately people like Mark Avery and the administrators of Raptor Persecution UK are keeping the challenge alive.
I have had a few, in fact quite a few, interactions with NE. My own experience is that they have lost the plot which is a shame. I can’t come up with any recent positive achievements for conservation. I can come up with negative ones. I pretty much agree with you Mark.
Hi Mark
NE have done some fantastic things in Norfolk. I’ll name a few, Quarles Wetland creation, Massingham Heath restoration, over 100ha of BAP grassland creation from locally collected seed, Deepdale Marsh, Narford Parkland restoration and 85 ha of newly created coastal grazing marsh at Wells. That’s just me, and there’s more where that came from. Colleagues are equally busy. Come and have a look if you like and revise your view maybe.
Cheers
John
Mark – There has been a misunderstanding here. For criticism to be useful and positive, you need to explain or at least understand how to do things better. Or at least to understand what the problem is.
It’s okay just moaning about Natural England and saying they are useless. But it doesn’t actually get us anywhere. I don’t disagree that the failure of Natural England to get to grips with issues like illegal raptor persecution, the culling of Lesser Black-backed Gulls in Bowland etc are serious problems. In other words I was never disagreeing with what you were probably saying. But unfortunately you were just saying meaningless things about NE being a failing organization, and I think in the past “not fit for purpose”. You weren’t outlining solutions.
The big question though is whether NE’s failure to be able to act is due to government and vested interest pressure on it, or whether NE could do better in the circumstances.
If the problem is that this is how the government wants our statutory conservation body to act, then the problem won’t be solved by re-structuring it, or replacing it with another organization. Not only would the replacement act the same, but the government would never implement such change when NE is actually behaving as it wants, therefore it would not see this as a problem.
What I tried to highlight is in actual fact our statutory conservation bodies and their regulatory framework was compromised from the very beginning, because it allowed governments and vested interests to interfere with the running of our statutory conservation bodies.
Essentially the problem occurs when we have a Conservative government. This is not a political statement, just an outlining of the problem. As Britain has amongst the highest level of private ownership of land in the developed world, this conservation regulation has to be imposed on private land. Traditionally the big landowners, whether titled people owning big estates, or farmers, have been associated with the Conservative Party. In fact they are the backbone of it and the power behind the frame.
These private landowners are typically opposed to official interference in how they manager their land. Therefore when you have a Conservative government it is easy for the landowners to lobby the government, because they are a very powerful lobby within the Conservative Party itself. Necessarily a Conservative government will put lots of pressure on the statutory conservation bodies not to impose restrictions on private landowners they do not like.
What I am saying is that it’s the whole system which allows this, that is at fault. As I pointed out there has been friction between Conservative governments and our statutory conservation bodies from way back. That is why a long time ago the Conservative Environment Secretary Nicholas Ridley broke up the old NCC, to neuter it, and to enable easier control of the statutory conservation bodies by Conservative governments.
This is why restructuring Natural England, changing it’s name etc would not work. Generally it has not been a problem with Labour administrations, simply because Labour has got no axe to grind as it isn’t dominated by private landowners, so it tends to let the statutory conservation bodies get on with it’s job.
Mark – I am still uncertain what you are actually saying and suggesting. I have clearly said what I see as the problem, and you haven’t really commented on this. I am not saying I am always right. All I was trying to find out was whether you agreed with what the problem is i.e. political interference. The government have after all effectively turned Defra into the department of the NFU and CLA. Where Defra pursues policy quite contrary to the scientific evidence and expert opinion, just because the NFU and landowners demand these unscientific solutions.
SteB – crikey again.
It would help if you responded to the points I made.
SteB – I did, you asked which of two options I thought was the cause, and I said both.
I’m sure this is a subject to which I’ll return, as I have done many times over several years.
This has been a slightly sad and unfortunate exchange. I think it is important and useful simply to highlight the failings of a body that many people assume is the final word on conservation issues in this country. My experience is that NE still commands a level of respect that it no longer deserves. For example, it suits some people to argue that if a body like NE is issuing licenses to kill wildlife, be it badgers, gulls or buzzards, then it’s clear that this is the best course of action on conservation grounds – hence comments like, “even the top conservation body in the country agrees that you can’t conserve nature without culling predators”.
An organisation can fail for many reasons – political interference, shortage of funds, poor quality leadership, inexperienced staff at any level, and many more. While it would, of course, be ideal to pinpoint the exact problem and propose a cure for it, simply highlighting that there is a serious problem is helpful, particularly when dealing with people perhaps less well informed than some commenters here.
My opinion is that NE has problems at many levels. We have all dealt with excellent NE staff, but I have also come across staff in the field (some from farming backgrounds) who need no encouragement from above to take the landowners’ side to the detriment of wildlife.
It must be straightforward working for a large NGO. Private funding, access to Government funded agri-environment grants, high staffing levels and one simple objective – to keep their members happy so they continue to pay their subs.
Try working for a government agency. Huge remit (not simply conservation) not enough staff, high workloads and a huge commitment by staff desperately trying to do the right thing and make a difference for the environment with limited resources. An easy target and continuously lambasted and criticised with no recognition whatsoever for the extensive habitat creation/restoration and protection being implemented.
Yes, Government organisation should be held accountable. Absolutely. But people also need to recognise that at their heart they are made up of committed people, trying to do the right thing and at the whim of the latest round of Ministers thinking. The environment is way down the list of priorities, always has been, always will be, because a healthy environment is simply seen as a cost and a burden hat can be dealt with later. And that attitude unfortunately won’t change until it’s too late and no one can remember what it was like any longe. Shifting baseline.
Bea – well, not really. As a taxpayer one is paying for an effective service not for the motives of the staff who are being failed too.
And I do notice that there hasn’t exactly been a flood of comments giving long lists of NE’s great recent achievements.
And have a look at NE’s media releases – not even the organisation finds much to brag about.
Sadly, I have to agree with you Mark. I worked for 30+ years for NE and predecessors, and I have never had a moment of regret at leaping at my offer of early retirement last year. Yes, the staff are great. But the leadership (of their own staff, and of the conservation movement) is at best floundering, at worst actively counterproductive to conservation gains for fear of upsetting Ministers. See my first two blogs from last October on http://www.chrisgibsonwildlife.co.uk/blog/ – my views have not changed in the past year.
Just as I was pleased to go, I suspect the leadership was pleased to see me go. In my last job as a Principal Advisor, it was my role to advise Directors etc of the risks around different courses of action, based on my long and active experience at the coalface. So just before the Early Retirement package was released, when in relation to a very contentious case I pointed out severe reputational risks (while also providing alternative low- or no-risk solutions) I was very openly slapped down ‘You do not tell the Board they are wrong’. And that is a direct quote from my then Director…. Little wonder I sought and was given early retirement.
At the end of that long and often acrimonious argument, it looks to me that there’s general agreement with Mark’s initial post, other than failing to sympathise with the many excellent and hard working NE staff that must be frustrated beyond belief, plus not going into the details of how to fix it. As I mentioned earlier, ditto EA.
One particular thing that concerns me is that constantly reducing frontline staff and funding, while broadly maintaining or increasing the workload (often through more bureaucracy) means the effectiveness of each job done tends to reduce until the point where it may as well not be done at all for all the good it does.
One fun thing I like to do is to roughly calculate the cost/benefit ratio of meetings in staff costs, travelling etc compared to meaningful outcomes. Often enlightening.
Mark, I agree that NE is not what it should be but please do say what you want done about it.
Do you want NE’s budget to be cut even further and/or the whole thing to be abolished? Do you want statutory protection of SSSIs to stop completely? (Many Tories would love that!).
Or would it be more constructive to campaign for it to have greater independence from government, being under the control of a board that actually has more than a couple of token nature conservationists on it- and enough funding to carry out the functions expected of it?
Sadly I think that SteB (who often makes well balanced and well informed comments on this blog and elsewhere and deserves a good deal of respect) is right that any senior staff who stand up to government would find themselves out of a job pretty damn quick.
What’s so striking in this above exchange and all your comments is that there is no mention at all of NE interaction with farmers and landowners. In my view both of you are more interested in the problem rather than any practical solutions and you are both so immersed in the public sector and ngo cultural ethos you seem to resemble bishops agrueing about angels on pinheads. The latest incarnation of countryside stewardship is a disaster thanks to both NE and the NGOs; designed by stakeholders who frankly have no practical ability to deliver anything on the ground and no concept of the issues involved within the private sector as concerns delivering these schemes. I doubt that NE or the RSPB will ever understand the farming community and their frustration with both organisations to deliver any practical conservation measures on the ground that actually can be delivered on a large enough scale to make any difference. Your both bloody useless if you want my opinion
Julian – thank you for your opinion
The mess that is Countryside Stewardship is RPA’s fault, not NE’s
It’s not just my opinion Mark but one that is shared by every farmer, land agent and agricultural advisor that I know. It’s something that no one should be very proud of and it was so depressingly predictable.
I work for NE, but I’m only a front line grunt. I do loads of great stuff for nature conservation. I don’t do as much as I’d want, the constraints being time and money, quite a bit of unnecessary paperwork exacerbating the former. I’m not failing and I’m constantly enthused by the amazing work that so many of my colleagues are doing.
Harold if your involved with MT or HT stewardship you must struggle to explain why you need three explanatory booklets and hundreds of pages of options and targets just to deliver any scheme at all. It’s all ridiculous and unnecessary and quite understandable puts farmers off applying. Add to this the fact that actually financially it’s very marginal and that any mistake could put their BPS payment at risk then why would they be involved? It’s a typical example of overthinking what is actually a very simple exercise by people who have never had the experience of running enterprises in the private sector. You could have had one box on the BPS form to tick to opt I’m to a range of environmental options picked from a suitable menu which you could have tailored to your location, business type and resources. There could have been a simple area based environmental top up to the BPS with the RPA monitoring delivery on their normal inspections but no we have this mess of forms and options. It’s mad.
I do practical voluntary work with both NE NNR staff and SNH staff.. those on the ground do a great job with the resources available. But, as an entity NE does seem to be no longer working.
A great analogy was something I caught up with yesterday which aired on radio 4 last week whilst I was off line volunteering for SNH – costing the earth did a programme on the Environment agency. The 8 second pause before answering a question on resources says it all for me regarding the functionality of any of the defra arms-length bodies. this pause was from the head of the EA when she was thinking of how best to answer the question. Take a listen, (its the last bit of the porgramme) and just replace EA with NE… still the same point!
There was a fundamental misunderstanding about the points I was making and why. It is my contention that all conservation bodies, or rather most, whether statutory, or NGOs are fundamentally compromised with it comes to the conservation of biodiversity and habitat. I tend to look at things in a systems way, and this approach is not familiar to many.
What I mean is this. Once any organization reaches a certain size it has to look to protecting itself, it’s very existence. It needs a sizeable income just to function, and persist. Any sudden shortfall in it’s income for covering it’s running costs would be disastrous and risk this organization imploding. This makes all such organizations very vulnerable to pressure which threatens it’s ability to finance it’s running costs. Vested interests are well aware of this. Look at how there has been attempts to remove the charitable status of both the RSPCA and the RSPB when they upset the hunting and shooting lobby.
This limits the ability of all such organizations to effective speak out on what might be seen controversial issues, because a backlash, in which it’s opponents attempt to reduce it’s funding threatens the overall organization, and the day to day running of it’s basic functions. This necessarily makes such organization over-cautious. It’s very complex with lots of wheels with in wheels, where it can create a management structure which can then feedback and also effect things.
The basis for this compromise is I believe this. There is a fundamental conflict between the growth at any cost economic policy pursued by most governments, and the conservation of biodiversity and habitat, especially in a crowded island like Britain. This growth at any cost, especially in it’s current incarnation, neoliberalism, essentially sees biodiversity and habitat as dispensable. In other words, governments, industry, other vested interests only pay lip service to conservation, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of it’s agenda. Yet as soon as conservation conflicts with the aims and objectives of government policy, industry, landowners, farming, conservation is expected to compromise to accommodate this.
The overall problem is that this is all done in a very underhand way, and there is often a huge gap between what I will call vested interests say publicly, and what they do and seek privately. Nowhere is this clearer than the illegal persecution of raptors. Where publicly, shooting interests, landowners, will pay lip service to the law being obeyed, raptors being protected, and what actually happens in practise. The impression is that most of these shooting interests etc, are duplicitous and disingenuous i.e. despite what they say publicly, that in actuality they probably condone the illegal persecution of raptors.
Many other conservation issues are like this. Vested interests no conservation is publicly popular, and that damaging conservation interests is unpopular. So vested interests have developed a practise of paying lip service in public, whilst pursuing a very different agenda behind the scenes.
Biodiversity and habitat in Britain has already been so damaged, that there is really no room to compromise. The overtly stated aims of most conservation, environmental protection organizations is to substantially reverse declines. Whereas vested interests want ongoing compromises. Being far more powerful vested interests have the ability to lean on an influence governments, ministers, MPs, many of which are only too willing to be leant on. Vested interests are powerful, with more ability to manipulate the users who are owned by powerful wealthy vested interests themselves.
This makes it very difficult for any conservation organization to do their job properly. To protect their organization from vindictive actions from vested interests, conservation organizations have to be cautious about speaking out.
Overall, my position is that it is unhelpful for conservationists to single out any other conservation organization for not doing enough, whilst failing to address why all conservation organizations are compromised. It is also hypocritical, because I could list plenty of examples pertaining to all conservation organizations of examples where they have been more focused on protecting their organization, than actually doing what they are supposed to do i.e. the very definition of over-cautiousness. This is very complex, and so necessarily I have had to skim over much of the detail.
My attention was drawn to this thread by a colleague and I need to say at the outset that I am responding in a personal capacity but from the standpoint of a junior management position in Natural England – a position I have held back to the days of Natural England’s predecessors.
Mark’s statement “Natural England is a failing organisation. It is no longer a champion for the natural environment and it is no longer a leader in environmental thinking and it is no longer doing its job” implies that there was some point where Natural England was more effective. I contend not. There was no golden age and we are doing more for the natural environment now than we ever have.
There are very many examples from around the country but I’ll confine mine to the territory I know – Dorset.
The Wild Purbeck initiative http://www.dorsetaonb.org.uk/our-work/wildpurbeck allowed a consortium of partners to bid successfully for £m of government funding to improve the biodiversity (and people’s access to it) of this part of Dorset. Wild Purbeck existed as a partnership project before the government funded Nature Improvement Area initiative and that strong partnership has continued since. Running right through that period, as one example, Natural England worked with a private landowner, using agri environment schemes, to clear 100ha of alien monoculture conifers quite legally established (with government grant) on the Arne SSSI before the protections of the 1981 Act kicked in. That whole area is now re-establishing as heathland with much of the special wildlife associated with that habitat already returned. When the private owner decided that they wanted to sell up Natural England was instrumental in helping the National Trust to buy one of the two blocks of land http://www.natureofdorset.co.uk/sites/slepe-heath. We are similarly supporting RSPB to try and buy the second which adjoins their Arne reserve, the website for their appeal is here if you would like to contribute: https://ww2.rspb.org.uk/join-and-donate/donate/appeals/arne-appeal/?source=arneppc&channel=paidsearch&gclid=CLvf_YuK3tYCFUm17Qod8E8KqQ.
I have just picked these as very obvious examples of where Natural England has, very recently, been involved in verifiable delivery supporting and supported by our partners and, yes, our clients and customers as well.
Sir John Lawton’s Making Space for Nature report was, for a time, the cutting edge of where the conservation movement was heading. The Wild Purbeck partnership was well positioned to pick up this challenge as, arguably, we were practicing landscape scale conservation before the report was published. That won’t be the end of the journey however and at the last Wild Purbeck project meeting Natural England led a discussion about ‘what next’ focusing on our emerging understanding of the importance of ecological succession and transitional habitats.
For millennia heathlands were an important economic resource and economic activity supported the wildlife. Part of the challenge of their conservation today is that many twentieth century economic uses were detrimental to much of the special wildlife of these sites. We have already been successful in reinstating cattle and pony grazing to many of these sites (with consequent advantages to much biodiversity) but we are still left with an excess of biomass that needs periodic removal (and this is especially so if we are to give more room to successional habitats). Working with the private sector, Forestry Commission and local government we are seeking the holy grail of an environmentally friendly harvesting system that can turn this biomass, which we need to remove for conservation reasons into a commercially viable fuel for space heating – not a leader in environmental thinking?
It is certainly true that under our present leadership team (Andrew Sells as Chair and James Cross as Chief Executive) there has been a change of culture. One of the seven habits of highly effective people is ‘first seek to understand before you seek to be understood’ which captures it pretty well. We are being encouraged to understand the businesses that we are responsible for regulating and to use our skills as ecologists to help them deliver sustainable development (that is part of our statutory purpose).
A good recent example of how this approach manifests itself is here: https://naturalengland.blog.gov.uk/2017/06/20/major-scheme-nominated-for-industry-innovation-award-for-new-approach-to-lizard-conservation/. Understanding the needs of the client and working with them allowed us, collectively, to nearly halve the cost of the conservation element of that work (compared to our traditional, regulation first, approach) while simultaneously delivering substantial improvements for biodiversity that were completely unavailable in our traditional approach.
But what if the business concerned ploughs on with damaging proposals? Well another example is here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/rampisham-down-a-wonderful-outcome-for-conservation. When I, as a front line manager, have felt the need to stand firm against a clearly damaging proposal I’ve not yet been denied either the support or the resources to allow me to that. And by standing firm against the original damaging proposals at Rampisham Down the site has been protected from development, the developer has carried out their development on an adjacent site with minimal biodiversity interest and we are now starting to achieve the conservation management that the Rampisham Down grassland needs for its long term survival.
Yes we have problems. Two big ones are the collision of EU rules for agri-environment schemes and the way that we choose to do bureaucracy in the UK. The nightmare labyrinth of rules and checks that is the Countryside Stewardship scheme regularly drives the staff who have to deal with this to the edge of clinical stress and beyond. If anyone is looking for a silver lining to the prospect of Brexit then the removal of the excuse ‘because the EU make us’ from this equation is probably it! More insidious though is the long, long task of purging the organisation of the deeply damaging culture driven into Natural England under its first Chief Executive that you achieve nature conservation through the mindless pursuit of arbitrary numbers (remember 70% of farmland being in ‘schemes’?) and corporate process. A key staff skill in those days was sophistry – the ability to develop ever more fanciful reasons for making up the numbers when the actual performance fell short. Nowadays the organisation values our skills as ecologists and leaders not sophists and administrators and that difference, while perhaps not so visible outside of the organisation is huge to those of us trying to do the job inside.
Very well put Ian.
Shall we mention the success of the farm cluster projects springing up around the country that NE advisors work alongside colleagues from other organizations to deliver…
…or exciting new ‘rewilding’ projects such as Knepp Castle which NE advisors helped implement and make happen.
…maybe the partnership working that is so fundamental to keeping one of the smallest, most protected, most heavily used and loved National Parks, the New Forest in favourable condition?
MPZs?
Perhaps even the nature reserves so many of us visit which contain SSSIs which NE have overall responsibility for its condition, working again with colleagues from other organizations to deliver conservation and public benefit. It might be worth Mr Avery checking out the recent award NE won alongside colleagues from RSPB, Somerset Wildlife Trust, Avalon Marshes Landscape Project, Hawk and Owl Trust, South West Heritage Trust.
Or perhaps the history behind Rainham Marshes? was it not NE staff who helped secure that site?
I think that is ANOTHER example of good conservation/partnership working?
I think Mark Avery is a bit ego drunk and should perhaps let those capable of looking for change in a different way get on with the job, he displays a clear lack of awareness of what is ACTUALLY happening in the conservation world today. Those of us that do work in the industry, that are slightly more grown up and professional, know very well that the staff at Natural England provide a key role in almost all aspects of conservation.
Pooh – poo indeed. Thank you for your first comment here. NE a long way off the pace as usual.
Thank you for this insight. My overall point here was that it was generally unhelpful to single Natural England out for criticism, as if it were the reason for the problems in conservation. The overall causes of our failure to address declines in our biodiversity and habitat is much deeper, far more systemic than Mark has implied. I really don’t think with the present system, and I mean everything from the government to how the whole system operates, that NE could do much more.
The forces which are driving Brexit, are essentially vested interests that want to frees us from the constraints the EU imposes on the UK. Vested interests see these EU regulations as restricting development, economic growth etc. We have a government, in which these factions driving Brexit are now prominent, and maybe dominant. This is that same government which essentially has overall control of Natural England. There is a strong link between Brexiteers and grouse moor owners. The same faction of the Conservative Party which tends to be promote hard Brexit, is generally the same faction which is strongly supportive of grouse moor owners.
Let’s just imagine a hypothetical scenario where Natural England went all out to tackle the illegal persecution of Hen Harriers are other raptors on grouse moors. Let’s imagine that that they gathered all sorts of evidence of how this illegal persecution was widespread on managed grouse moors, and was being done systematically, most probably with the full knowledge of the grouse moor owners. Imagine, in this hypothetical scenario that NE then released all this evidence into the public domain to embarrass the government into taking action.
How does anyone think a government, where the right wing Brexit factioin of the Conservative Party hold Theresa May over a barrel, would react? Remember this is the same faction of the Conservative Party, the same MPs, which when Mark’s petition to bad driven grouse shooting resulted in a debate in the House of Commons, stood up to defend grouse shooting.
I don’t think it takes much imagination to figure out what would happen. NE would be denounced as having engaged in a political act, and it would be completely stripped of its powers, made unable to do even basic conservation work.
It’s absolutely no coincidence that Paul Dacre the editor of the Daily Mail, who did as much as anyone to aid Brexit, is a grouse moor owner. Indeed you will find that many prominent Brexiteers are either involved in grouse shooting, or generally have strong links to so called country sports and big landowners.
If this lobby wants to get rid of the EU’s influence because it conflicts with their vested interests, especially with regard to the environment, does anyone really think they’d put up with a statutory conservation body getting in their way, and being a thorn in the side to their vested interests. Especially in an scenario where they find that they have unusual influence and power in government.
What I’m essentially saying is that Natural England is an effect, rather than a cause. In other words the type of statutory conservation body we have, it’s powers, and overall policy is the result of a behind the scenes battle between vested interests to control government policy, and the overt supposed duty of government to protect the natural environment in the public interest. These vested interests necessarily want a statutory conservation body with limited powers, and which does not interfere in their vested interests.
It is a mistake to focus criticising the effect, rather than focusing on cause of the present situation.
I am a manager in a local team for Natural England. Mark asks for examples of NE’s recent achievements. Among others I could list are:
sourcing the funding for the restoration of 500ha of degraded lowland raised bog and then managing the delivery of the practical works which will be completed this winter.
designating a coast path around the Cumbria coast that will allow many, many people to enjoy more of the natural environment at the coast
Worked with partners and community to significantly increase the local marsh fritillary population
worked with NGO partners and provided the right advice and agri-env incentive to allow the creation of 100s of ha of upland scrub across the W Lake District and E Dales to create habitat for black grouse and provide natural flood risk reduction
I could go on, but I hope these facts will go some way to refuting Mark’s assertion that we no longer do our job and have lost the confidence of the NGO sector
Would love to John