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Re: Local Development Framework Monitoring & LRCs

Local Development Framework Monitoring: A Good Practice Guide
http://www.communities.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1143905

The Local Development Plans produced by Local Authorities all over the country are being guided by the LDF document obtainable from the above address.
Demands from these Local Authorities to Local Records Centres are now flooding in.
They require statistical biodiversity information which LRCs are not necessarily geared up to deliver. I only know of a couple who are striving to produce the information demanded.

Here's the text for the key portion termed "Core indicators" (p73) which will find its way into all these plans:

BIODIVERSITY
8. Change in areas and populations of biodiversity importance, including:
(i) change in priority habitats and species (by type); and
(ii) change in areas designated for their intrinsic environmental value including sites of international, national, regional, sub-regional or local significance.
DEFINITIONS
– ‘change’ to be considered in terms of impact of completed development, management programmes and planning agreements.Measurement includes additions and subtractions to biodiversity priority habitats (hectares) and numbers of priority species types. Regional targets for biodiversity priorities are compiled by regional biodiversity partnerships, reflecting those in the national biodiversity action plan and those agreed by local biodiversity partnerships at the sub-regional level.
Priority habitats and species are found in designated sites and the wider landscape.
– Areas of environmental value should be measured in hectares.

There is an urgent need for LRCs to share our experiences regarding solutions we may have devised to deal with these types of request.
Responses to the following questions and observations would be of interest to many LRC people:

1. The demanded statistics were incorporated into these guidelines without reference to the biological recording community?
2. No resources were made available to LRCs to enable these statistics to be gathered.
3. Some of the statistics presuppose that surveys (on populations) were carried out prior to the first appearance of these guidelines.
4. There has been no national debate about the impact that these "guidelines" might have on LRCs.
5. Some of the above are questions addressed to LRCs which are, in fact, questions which should be addressed to national agencies (e.g. Natural England are responsible for most of the sites except for the last category)
6. None of the above answers are acceptable responses by an LRC to their partner Local Authorities.
7. Which LRCs are responding with "we have not gathered information regarding these indicators" and which not?
8. Of the latter group, what Recorder methods (reporting, XML etc.) have you devised in order to measure and report "numbers of priority species types"
9. What is meant by a "priority species type"
10. If these guidelines do not find themselves incorporated into Local Development Plans then we fail to use one of our most effective conservation tools.

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Re: Local Development Framework Monitoring & LRCs

Darwyn, could you post this over on the LRC forum?

Charles

Charles Roper
Digital Development Manager | Field Studies Council
http://www.field-studies-council.org | https://twitter.com/charlesroper | https://twitter.com/fsc_digital

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Re: Local Development Framework Monitoring & LRCs

Sure, Charles. Had intended to but needed a cup of sweet tea after that lot!