There have been a number of initiative that have been developing over the past few months in response to NEWP and I am contacting you to give you an update on how Nottinghamshire has responded to these.
Local Nature Partnerships (LNPs)As part of NEWP the Government is hoping to create around 50 new partnerships around England to focus on delivering nature conservation benefits. A fund of £1million had been put aside to support the initial development of these partnerships. The LNP’s would build on existing partnerships broadening their agenda, membership and vision. They would also seek to develop biodiversity work into areas where existing partnerships were not engaged. In guidance it has been suggested that LNPs should seek to work closely with Local Economic Partnership (LEP). Locally the LEP covers both Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.
As a result NottinghamshireBAG has been in touch with the Lowland Derbyshire LBAP (back in mid July) and together the existing partnerships agreed to put in a bid to create a two county LNP that covered the same area as the Local Economic Partnership (the bid was submitted on July 31st - this was the deadline for Round 1 bids).
Unfortunately in September we heard that the bid had been unsuccessful, with the main reason being that the bid overlapped with a second bid from the Peak District National Park . Subsequently Derbys/Notts approached the Peak District NP with regards to submitting a second bid for the round 2 deadline at the end of October. Discussions have led to Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire submitting a second bid based on the combined areas of the existing LBAP partnerships (excluding the Peak District part of Derbyshire).
The bid will be submitted in time for the deadline at the end of October and the Notts/Derbyshire partnership should hear if we have been successful in December.
Nature Improvement Areas - the Government is looking to create 12 NIA’s across England and has put aside £7.5 million to support these between 2011 and 2014. It is hoped that these new landscape scale biodiversity enhancement areas will incorporate the key components of ecological networks (core areas, corridors, stepping stones, restoration areas, buffer zones, sustainable use areas), identified in Making Space for Nature Review (Sir John Lawton).
Initial bids were required to be submitted to Natural England by the end of September. The BAG partnership has been involved in 3 bids and a further bid has been put forward that covers (in part) Nottinghamshire. The four potential NIA's are listed below.
1) Sherwood - building on existing work from the SHSG (NWT lead partner)
2) Erewash - a cross border bid with Derbyshire (DWT lead partner)
3) Humberhead Levels - led by the Humberhead Levels Partnership Board
4) Southern Magnesian Limestone – led by Limestone Journeys partnership (unfortunately they have not contacted any partners in Nottinghamshire but their project area includes Mansfield District).
NE have announced that there have been 76 submissions for NIA in England.
The timeline for the NIA process is
31st October 2011 NE to inform all successful applicants that they are through to the second stage
4th November 2011 Informative workshop for 2nd stage applications
16th December 2011 2nd stage business plan to be completed and submitted
6th February 2012 If successful at stage 2 applicants will be asked to present their plans to a panel
Biodiversity Offsetting - As part of NEWP the government is looking to trial biodiversity offsetting in 4 pilot schemes across England. The offsetting scheme would involve compensating for unavoidable biodiversity loss in a measurable way.
Nottinghamshire has responded to Defra with regards to an expression of interest to be one of the pilot schemes. The EoI was submitted by the Sept 30th deadline.
I hope that this brief update is useful to you all. If however you would like any more information I will do my best to help with your queries.
Best Wishes
Chris Jackson
Biodiversity Officer
Nottinghamshire Biodiversity Action Group
0115 977 4213
07753 850760
