You may remember that I wrote to Natural England about SSSIs in my local area (click here). I’ve had a reply.
It’s a pretty clear reply and I’ve highlighted in a purply-pink colour two passages that are of particular interest. The first says ‘the data on the designated sites system are up to date’ – in other words the condition assessments really are this out of date – it’s not just that we haven’t had time or resources to edit the data displayed. The second explains that Unfavourable Recovering can mean that there is a plan allegedly in place but it doesn’t necessarily mean that anything really is recovering because this hasn’t been checked.
The English Protected Area system, run by the statutory sector, rarely checks sites and assumes that a site is recovering if there is a plan in place that might lead to recovery if implemented well.
This is like running an MOT system for cars where you rarely check their roadworthiness and assume that all the faults will be corrected if you send someone away with a list of things to do.
Dear Dr Avery
Case ref: 2002231421CW
Thank you for your email to Natural England which was received on 20th February 2023.
I have gathered some information regarding condition assessments in relation to your questions. I hope this information answers your queries.
Designated Sites Views (https://designatedsites.naturalengland.org.uk) and www.MAGIC.gov.uk hold the information about site condition and the last time an assessment was undertaken.
Each SSSI was selected on the basis of one or more “features of interest” and the SSSI comprises one or more units. Natural England reports condition at the unit level. From April 2023 we will also report condition at the feature level.
In 2015 Natural England introduced a risk-based approach to deciding when a SSSI unit would be assessed based on several factors. The number of condition assessments undertaken between 2015 and 2020 declined significantly but additional funding since then has increased capacity and resulted in the ability to increase the number of assessments made. All four nature conservation bodies (Natural England, NatureScot, NRW and DAERA) and the JNCC released a statement in 2022 describing how the nature conservation bodies are all moving to a risk-based approach to monitoring to ensure best use of resources and new technologies. https://hub.jncc.gov.uk/assets/0450edfd-a56b-4f65-aff6-3ef66187dc81
The recent Environmental Improvement Plan has set Natural England a challenging target of having an up-to-date assessment for every SSSI by 31 January 2028. Natural England are producing a prioritised monitoring plan for the period of the EIP target, and this will be available later this year.
When a site unit is assessed, the condition may be categorised into; Favourable, Unfavourable – Recovering, Unfavourable – No change, Unfavourable – Declining and Destroyed/Part Destroyed.
Unfavourable recovering condition is often known simply as ‘recovering’. The Feature is not yet fully conserved but all the necessary management measures are in place. This means that the necessary actions to achieve favourable condition have been identified; at least one action is underway; and no actions are behind schedule. Provided that the recovery work is sustained, the feature will reach favourable condition.
Natural England provides advice to land managers about the measures needed to ensure that the condition of Unfavourable Units improves and thereby contributes to delivery of Natural England’s statutory purpose and international and national objectives. Natural England seeks to secure appropriate management of protected sites through close working relationships with those who own or use the sites, including tenants, small landowners, and large landowning organisations.
Staff visit sites for other reasons apart from undertaking a condition assessment and during these visits staff look to check that the management activities are improving the condition of a site’s features. At this point recommendations can be made about undertaking a new condition assessment.
Deciding on when to undertake a condition assessment is based on the feature’s vulnerability and its resilience. The more vulnerable it is, the more frequently an assessment might be required. Additional information about past management, partnership-working and condition stability is factored in to deciding when a new assessment of condition is required.
Natural England has a protected sites data system (which generates the information available in Designated Sites View), this is the primary source of information used by Natural England and partner organisations to track progress with site improvements as management actions are implemented.
I hope this information has been useful to you.
Yours sincerely
Farm and Conservation Service
Email: [email protected]
[registration_form]
NE’s SSSI site monitoring programme has been a complete shambles for years. For many sites it’s not even clear if all the original designated interest features are still there. Some sites bear little resemblance to their citation, which may have been written forty years (or more) ago.
I was interested in the statement “The recent Environmental Improvement Plan has set Natural England a challenging target of having an up-to-date assessment for every SSSI by 31 January 2028.”
A challenging target?
There’s just over 4100 SSSI in England. There’s 12 NE regional teams and around 2000 NE staff. There’s around 975 working days between now and that deadline. The maths ain’t hard. Even if only 10% of NE staff are skilled enough to check SSSI condition, that would require those staff to visit less than 1 SSSI a month to achieve that target.
And if only 10% of NE staff are skilled enough to assess SSSI condition, why?
NE does not help itself in these situations. We all want it to be a fully functioning, effective entity. We all know the reasons why it isn’t. But all it does is parrot the dictat which Defra ‘allows’ it to say.
This is not a ‘challenging’ response to an urgent nature conservation matter: arguably a crisis. NE should be pointing at the real reasons why our best wildlife sites are so neglected, not putting up smoke screens to protect their jailors in Defra and the Govt. I’d like to ask them whether they consider they’re even ‘quasi’ autonomous these days.
NE say they are moving to a ‘feature-based’ assessment of SSSI condition. However, many of the SSSI Designation Statements are unfit for this purpose, as they do not clearly describe the important nature conservation (incl geological) features. Several years ago when I was involved in SSSI Assessments as a NGO rep, we were told that NE had carried out a rapid review of SSSI Designation Statements, as that more than 25% required important changes in the words, and sometimes also the site boundaries. That is over 1000 documents to review. I doubt if 10% have been looked at. I really do hope that NE step up again, having been in the doldrums for a decade.
‘Thirty by thirty’ could be a great step towards stemming the decline of wildlife in this country but only if it truly refers to land that is genuinely and effectively managed to protect wildlife. The problem is that ministers just want simple headline figures on this which – as with other measures of government performance such as inflation or unemployment figures or rates of new hospital creation – immediately provides the opportunity and the temptation to fudge things. As a result we get the attempt to claim national parks as counting towards land protected for wildlife and this kind of evaluation of the condition of SSSIs which, instead of driving progress, conceal how bad things are.
It is really important to call this out.
The main problem is that NE has not put nearly enough of its staff into the local teams doing real on-the-ground work. There is far too high a proportion of entirely office-based staff – doing all sorts of things that don’t involve going out on site or talking to the people who manage those sites.