Agenda item

To consider a number of environmental issues for the Area Board.

To hear from:

·       Parishes,

·       BART (river)

·       Youth group

·       Climate Friendly Bradford

·       Nature Recovery Plan

The Board considered several environmental issues in the area, hearing from numerous partners:

Wingfield Parish Council

• Explained that they had established a working group called Greener Wingfield, which allowed them to involve local councillors and residents together
• Reiterated the importance of parish councils being involved in green initiatives.
• Described a slow start to the group with small events to meet and greet and gather ideas. Leaflet drops had been made to encourage participation from residents. Information on local grants available for green projects was also distributed.
• There was a Walking Wingfield Map leaflet in its planning stage.
• The Annual Litter Pick was due to take place soon.
• Wildlife recording was described as a priority for Wingfield to understand what wildlife is present and the level of need.

Winsley Parish Council

• Wild Winsley After School Club was described as a major success which worked on a variety of projects such as rewilding the school field and planting trees.

• Hosted the organisation Nature Chain who look to inspire people to leave an area of their gardens wild to create a “chain” between gardens.

• Ideas to run a river festival were being explored.

Bristol Avon Rivers Trust (BART)

A charity that began in 2012, BART delivers education, land and river management advice and practical river restoration work throughout the Bristol Avon catchment.

Their aim was to re-connect communities to their local rivers and help them to better appreciate and improve them for the benefit of people and wildlife.??

The rest of BART’s presentation describing all of their work can be found in the PowerPoint presentation.

Bradford On Avon Town Council

Described much of their volunteer work sampling across the Bristol Avon catchment, noting an improvement between July 2023 and January 2024. Their analysis looked for indicators including temperature, phosphates, nitrates and data collected was uploaded to BART’s database.

Climate Friendly Bradford On Avon

Climate Friendly Bradford On Avon gave a presentation urging the Area Board to become more involved in countywide initiatives relating to climate change. These included:

• Making climate action a separate Area Board priority

• Taking Wiltshire Council’s Carbon Literacy Awareness Training

• Improving community climate awareness and engagement

The full presentation can be found in the PowerPoint

Nature Recovery Plan (LNRS)

A video was shown to attendees.

The LNRS process was described as having two main outputs:

• A written document listing priority opportunities for habitat improvement and restoration in the strategy area??.

• A Spatial Map or local habitat map to contain existing nature sites and habitats, and locations of priorities for future habitat improvement and restoration.

The following statement was read out:

What is a LNRS going to do?

Across the globe, driven by human impacts,?species’ population and range sizes?are?declining?by?13%?on average with?80% of land area in the UK? being intensively managed for food production and urban development. This has led?to habitats being degraded and fragmented?which, alongside climate change is resulting in a loss of biodiversity?.

?The 2010 Lawton review set out a vision to reverse this loss by making existing and restored natural habitats ‘bigger, better, more and joined-up’. These restored habitats would then constitute an ‘ecological network’ which would allow species to move and persist in landscapes.

??The UK Government’s 25 Year Environment Plan (published in 2018) sets out the aim to create a national-scale Nature Recovery Network (NRN) in England, based on Lawton’s BBMJ principles, so that 30% of land will be designated as nature sites by 2030, alongside plans to create 500,000 hectares of new or improved habitat outside of these designated sites.?

?In the 2020 Environment Bill, Local Nature Recovery Strategies (LNRS) are laid out as a mechanism to deliver the Lawton Review recommendations at a local and regional scale, by mapping ecological networks and identifying habitat restoration priorities.?

How we are approaching the LNRS

The LNRS is intended as a tool to guide people on what needs to happen where and how important it is. This will inform local policy, drive financial markets, agri environment schemes and decision making. Each LNRS will consist of a written document which will outline the Nature in Wiltshire, the priorities for habitat restoration and conservation and other opportunities to deliver environmental benefits.? This document will be accompanied by mapping which will visually set out key existing national and local wildlife sites, priority sites for future habitat creation and recommendations for land use changes that will best deliver for Nature in that area.?

Timeline

Our timeline shows the process on our LNRS schedule.

Firstly, we started the production work for the LNRS in February, we have finished the initial usability testing sessions where we received initial feedback on what we are aiming for as a final product and what different user groups wish to see within this product.

LNRS engagement is ongoing, especially as we head into our longlisting process where information is gathered on priorities and measures. Following this we will send out a survey to ask for further information on priorities and measures to determine the LNRS. All this information will then be collated and filtered.

This is immediately followed by shortlisting which aims to result in 2 or 3 priorities each for species, habitats and wider environmental goals in each of the 11 areas, building something bespoke to the landscape. During this time, alongside the shortlisting, mapping will be undertaken which in turn will provide the maps for our public spatial and ground truthing events. These events will be where we gather information and feedback on the mapping produced and the finalised priorities and measures.

We then have two months to produce our final document and will publish online this December. Followed by the democratic process for Wiltshire.