News
New Guide to Help Local Planners Protect Precious Habitats
31st March 2006
Guidance on how the planning system can help preserve and enhance England's most valuable habitats was launched today by Planning Minister, Baroness Kay Andrews.
The new good practice guide offers help and advice to local authorities on how to embrace biodiversity and geological conservation within planning decisions and development. The guide offers a variety of information and best practice examples, including using web-based technology and how to integrate conservation into planning for new developments.
Planning for Biodiversity and Geological Conservation: A Guide to Good Practice follows the publication of Planning Policy Statement 9 last August, which set out how the planning system should support the conservation of our natural heritage, on both designated sites and in the wider environment. This was accompanied by a new cross-government circular that provides guidance on the sites and species that receive statutory protection under national and international law.
Baroness Kay Andrews said: "It's critically important that we protect our natural heritage for future generations. Whilst we need to provide new homes and expand communities, we must also ensure precious habitats such as ancient woodlands, heaths and rivers are not lost. Our planning system has a vital role to play and we want to support local planners make the right decisions about often fragile environments.
"Through our new planning policy, we have already stepped up the protection of such habitats. This new guide offers advice to local authorities on how to put this policy into practice on the ground. I am confident planners across the country will use this guide which will help ensure we protect the environment for years to come."
Biodiversity Minister, Jim Knight said: "Protecting wildlife and habitats is absolutely fundamental to the Government's aim to reverse the decline in biodiversity by 2010. To achieve that we need to ensure that biodiversity is considered at all stages of the planning process.
"This Guidance will be an invaluable guide to everyone involved in the planning process on how to ensure that biodiversity is considered and priority habitats are recognised when planning decisions are made. It will help everyone involved in land use planning maintain a strong focus on biodiversity and geological conservation."
The Government's vision for conserving and enhancing biological diversity in England is set out in Working with the grain of nature: a biodiversity strategy for England, launched by Margaret Beckett, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in 2002. The strategy aims to integrate biodiversity into policy making and practice.
The good practice guide, along with PPS9 and the circular, reinforces the need to integrate biodiversity into all planning considerations. Biodiversity and our natural environment have a significant impact on the quality of our daily lives.
Dr Andy Clements, Director of Science, Evidence and Policy for Natural England added: "There is a growing acceptance that to achieve sustainable development we must work with, and not against, natural processes. This good practice guide provides straight forward advice for planning authorities to help them understand more about their natural environment, to develop policies which promote its protection and enhancement and to make decisions on developments where biodiversity and geological conservation form a key part".
