You will hopefully be aware by now that the JNCC have announced their intention to stop financial and administrative support for Recorder 6 at the end of March 2018 (see announcement on the NBN Forum here https://forums.nbn.org.uk/viewtopic.php?id=7028).

Earlier this year, mindful that support for Recorder 6 has been decreasing over recent years, the London & South East Record Centres (LaSER) decided to take the initiative.  Following a LaSER meeting on 16 August 2017, Sussex Biodiversity Record Centre (SxBRC) and Greenspace Information for Greater London (GiGL) commissioned a ‘Recorder 6 Consultation’ which has been developed by Andy Foy with input from the ALERC Databases Group chaired by Ian Carle.

The consultation is now available as an online form here https://www.cognitoforms.com/SxBRC/Reco … nsultation. Please send us your responses!

The form has been designed to gather as much information as possible about who uses Recorder 6, how they use it, what they most like & dislike about it, and how it should be financially supported.  This will help us determine if there is sufficient interest and commitment within the biological recording and local environmental record centre communities to take over the responsibility of funding the support and development of Recorder 6 in the future.  Please take a look at the form, even if you don't use Recorder 6, as there are some generic questions which are relevant regardless of what biological recording systems you use - this will help build a picture of who doesn't use Recorder 6 and why.

The form should take 20-45 minutes to complete and you will need access to your copies of Recorder 6 (if you use it) to answer some of the questions.  You can save your progress at any time by clicking on the "Save" button at the bottom of each page - you will then be given the option to copy or email a link (e.g. to a colleague) to return to your form and complete your submission.  If you are submitting the form on behalf of an organisation please ensure that only one submission is completed per organisation.

We are hoping to reach as many Recorder 6 users as possible so if you know of any users that may not be aware of this consultation please forward this information to them.  We would like to collate and analyse all of the results before the new year so please could you aim to complete the consultation by Fri 15th December.

An anonymised summary of the results will be shared via the NBN forum in due course.