Concerns have been expressed from various quarters about the lack of information regarding sites published on the NBN Gateway.
1. I am still unable to manage metadata for sites datasets I submit.
2. There is no facility on the NBN Gateway (perhaps a button against the dataset on the opening map pages) to provide any text concerning this site dataset.
3. On homing into a site, at the point where we have a detailed map, there is no site-based information (just species content)
In a recent letter to me requesting an article for the Wildlife Trust's SITE matters, Katherine Hawkins, quite rightly, flags a number of issues related to land owners, summarised as follows:
1. How much site information is included
2. Intellectual property rights
3. How do landowners feel about information being published on this site
4. What if the Local Wildlife Site is not publicly accessible? Does this / has this affected landowners
All of which accords with our experience of concerns that landowners actually have.
We would like to have a facility somewhere on these pages to provide a description of our dataset.
At the very least it should be possible to add a comment along the lines of "The publication of this site boundary does not necessarily imply public access". We would also like to provide an opportunity for such landowners to obtain full details of our survey methodologies and consultation procedures, together with firm assurances of their rights under the Data Protection Act and EIR.
P.S. I notice with the latest update of our Local Wildlife Sites dataset that the location name is no longer suffixed with our reference number. There are hundreds of locations with the same name (e.g. Hedgerow) and we cannot process individual enquiries without that reference number.