Wiltshire & Swindon Local Nature Recovery Strategy

Wiltshire Council are leading the LNRS process for Wiltshire.

Local Nature Recovery Strategies (LNRS) are a mechanism to deliver recovery at a local and regional scale as introduced in the legislation.gov.uk: Environment Act 2021 - Local nature recovery strategies Section 106. The Wiltshire and Swindon Local Nature Recovery Strategy will consist of a document containing biodiversity priorities and a habitat map which will inform and guide nature recovery across Wiltshire.

The Local Nature Recovery Strategy will:

• agree priorities for nature's recovery
• map the most valuable existing areas for nature
• map specific proposals for creating or improving habitat for nature and wider environmental goals

For further information, read GOV.UK: Policy paper - Local nature recovery strategies.

The UK's wildlife is continuing to decline, with the State of Nature, a comprehensive report on UK wildlife, showing that the species studied have, on average, declined by 19% in the UK since monitoring began in 1970. Great Britain is one of the most nature depleted countries in the world with nearly one in six species threatened with extinction.

Much of this decline is due to the intensification of human land use. This has led to natural and semi-natural habitats being degraded and fragmented which, alongside climate change, is resulting in a loss of biodiversity.

By mapping where important habitats can be conserved, restored and connected, Wiltshire and Swindon's Local Nature Recovery Strategy will allow effort and funding to be funnelled into the most important areas, supporting Nature Recovery across the landscape. Wiltshire and Swindon's Local Nature Recovery Strategy can also help to achieve the multiple environmental benefits that nature brings to people, such as: clean air and water, reduced flood risk and socio-economic benefits such as tourism or green prescribing.

To see how Wiltshire is divided up for the LNRS please refer to the Area descriptions for the Local Nature Recovery Strategy. 

User testing was conducted in February 2024, these events were designed to gain an understanding of how various audience groups needed to use the LNRS within their sectors of work so the LNRS could be designed to fit needs and ensure better uptake of its recommendations.

Events

During March, three in person workshops were run to gather different priorities for nature recovery across Wiltshire.

There were 146 attendees over the three events.

Online Survey

Alongside the in-person Longlist events, an online survey was run between 7 March and 31 March to continue to capture ideas for nature recovery from a wider audience.

There were 276 responses to the survey.

Consolidation

Work is now taking place to consolidate the output from events and to merge this with priorities and measures in preexisting strategies, such as river catchment strategies.

Shortlisting is due to begin in May 2024 after the outputs from the longlisting work have been consolidated.

Shortlisting will be completed by a shortlisting working group and a species specialist group. Their outputs will then be viewed by a validation group of those who know the area well to check outcomes.

A contractor able to undertake the complex work required to model “ areas that could become of importance to nature recovery” according to the priorities and measures shortlisted, will be appointed in April 2024.

The Mapping produced from the shortlisted priorities and measures will be purely data driven. Therefore, the map will only be as accurate as the data we have.  This means that we need people who truly know their local area to comment and provide feedback to improve our map and to help us identify further opportunities where appropriate.

To gather this information and feedback, three in person events and various webinars with an accompanying survey will be hosted throughout July. Please ensure you are on the mailing list to receive updates and invitations.

After Ground truthing events and the writing of the strategy the project moves into democratic sign off processes. This will consist of:

• Supporting authority sign offs - Swindon Council and The New Forest National Protected Area) will comment and sign off the LNRS
• Formal Public Consultation –formal consultation process to the public on the LNRS.
• Natural England copy – the consultation copy of the LNRS will go to Natural England for their comments.
• Council Sign off – the LNRS will go through the Environment Select Committee, Cabinet and then to Full Council to sign off on council adoption of the LNRS
• Fully adopted LNRS sent to DEFRA

More details on these steps will be provided as we undertake them..

Please email localnaturerecoverystrategy@wiltshire.gov.uk if you have any queries related to this work.

Oversight and steering groups meet on a regular basis. 

Oversight group

Wiltshire Council representative - Rachel Jones

Swindon representative - Des Hobson

New Forest National Park Authority - Paul Walton

LNRS Lead - Alison Levy

NE representative - Charles Routh

Steering group

A local authority representative - Alison Levy

DEFRA family representative - Charles Routh

Wiltshire Wildlife Trust representative on behalf of other eNGO's – Chelsie Fuge

River Catchment representative  - Alex Deacon

Farming Consultancy representative - Simon Smart

Protected Landscapes - Simon Smith

GIS representative  -  Jon Isherwood

Neighbourhood planning representative - Andrea Pellegram