APPENDIX A County Council Natural Environment Strategy 2012-2018

Proposed draft version 04

April 2012

Purpose of the Strategy

Lincolnshire County Council has a statutory duty to have regard to biodiversity in undertaking its operations. For many years, the Council has been involved with a number of partner organisations in delivering initiatives and managing sites and areas that are important for the maintenance, protection and promotion of Lincolnshire’s natural environment.

The recent Government White Paper, The Natural Choice , provides an opportunity to review the Council’s work in this area and to ensure that public resources are being deployed in the most effective way possible.

To this end, this Strategy establishes a clear set of priorities within a national framework, in order to provide Council services, local communities and businesses and partner organisations with clarity and confidence about the approach the Council will take in working with the natural environment.

Lincolnshire County Council’s approach to the natural environment

The Council will work with local businesses, communities, landowners and partner organisations to protect and improve Lincolnshire’s natural environment, providing economic, social, health and amenity benefit to all who live in, work in and visit the county.

Strategic Outcomes

The natural environment is better understood, and is valued by residents, visitors and businesses for its contribution to the local and regional economy and to the health and amenity of local communities.

Effective promotion of Lincolnshire’s natural environment, increases the county’s profile as a tourist destination, contributing to increasing visitor numbers and the amount of time they spend within the area.

The natural environment of Lincolnshire is more resilient to climate change, the impacts of which are better understood.

The Council’s approach to the natural environment is integrated across its different service areas and with that of its partners and local communities, making the most of existing resources and attracting in more.

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Liaison with Local Planning Authorities ensures planning policy balances promotion of sustainable growth and economic regeneration with the protection and enhancement of the natural environment.

Objectives

Establish a method of demonstrating the value of Lincolnshire’s natural environment to the economy, education, health and well-being of local communities, businesses and visitors to the county.

Provide a clear long-term direction and business case for the Council’s involvement and investment in improvement and management of the natural environment. This aligns with and supports key partner strategies and plans, locally and nationally, maximises the resources and benefits available locally and brought in externally, and ensures Council resources are used to the greatest effect in combination with those of partners.

Use LCC’s resources and responsibilities to facilitate a strategic approach to the management of the natural environment, (a ‘landscape-scale’ approach) focusing on key strategic sites and areas, respecting international, national and local protections, building on existing landscape and historic landscape character areas and assessments, and maximising community and economic benefit.

Support initiatives that add to the amenity value and biodiversity of existing areas and sites by creating links between them or extending them where appropriate.

Identify and develop opportunities to add value to existing and new initiatives, such as green infrastructure projects, the historic environment and protected landscapes, by joining up across service areas and partner organisations.

Strengthen strategic partnership working with individual partner organisations and support the development and establishment of a Local Nature Partnership for Lincolnshire.

Establish an agreed evidence base against which the Council and its partners can measure progress in managing the natural environment.

Develop a consistent approach to working with local communities, businesses, landowners and voluntary organisations, and provide partner organisations with clarity about the Council’s priorities and commitment for the natural environment.

Develop long-term programme of working with local communities to manage, and promote their own environmental assets, as part of a countywide strategy for community involvement and engagement.

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Supporting a ‘landscape-scale’ approach: key strategic areas and sites

The County Council will concentrate its resources on a small number of strategically important areas which provide the best return in terms of economic, health, biodiversity and social and cultural benefit.

Important considerations include capacity to attract tourism, local public amenity and the opportunity to work with what already exists.

Above all, the role of local communities in shaping and managing their environment is recognised as a key strength.

The areas are

• The Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) • The Lincolnshire Limewoods • The Lincolnshire Coastal Country Park • Lincolnshire Coastal Grazing Marshes • Trent Vale

In addition, the Council will continue to resource the management of a small number of strategically important sites through partnership arrangements with the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust

• Country Park and Local Nature Reserve • Gibraltar Point National Nature Reserve • Whisby Local Nature Reserve

The Council will seek to promote activities that provide multiple benefits, encouraging interconnections between these strategic areas and sites, and embedding the principles of community involvement, economic value and promotion of education, health and tourism benefits across them.

It will be an important consideration that once an initiative is completed it will leave a lasting legacy that can be built on further in the future. As initiatives are completed, the Council will identify opportunities for redeploying resources in line with its strategic priorities. Examples of this include the emerging Welland Valley Partnership and the potential Witham Valley Country Park.

Green Infrastructure

One of the greatest challenges to the health of the natural environment is fragmentation of sites and size reduction. This reduces the movement of wildlife and the spread of plants, and can lead to lowering the biological diversity of a site to the point that it is no longer capable of supporting a species or range of species.

Infrastructure planning has a crucial role to play in offsetting such problems, delivering linkage between areas and sites on the ground, particularly through the development of green infrastructure corridors on a landscape scale.

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Management of our key strategic sites will be closely linked to the development of initiatives such as the Witham Valley Country Park as a delivery vehicle for landscape-scale site linkage, with associated benefits of enhancing public access and health promotion.

Local nature reserves (LNRs) and local sites

A key principle of this Strategy is the need to work with local people, landowners and businesses to support and facilitate genuine local involvement in the natural and cultural environment.

The County Council has the power to designate sites as Local Nature Reserves, which it has exercised on numerous occasions. These can be owned by the County Council, Town and Parish Councils or by charities. There are also a number of former landfill sites which provide local amenity, two of which, have been designated as Local Nature Reserves.

Examples of these include

• Cross O’Cliff Orchard LNR • LNR • South Thoresby LNR • Horncastle Community Woodland • Croft Marsh LNR

These local sites have been designated in response to local demand, and are largely managed and maintained by local people with support from officers from the Council’s Environmental Services Strategy and Partnerships Team, providing a network of local people who are informed and committed to working for the benefit of the natural environment.

The County Council is also able to support small individual initiatives through the communities and woodlands grant scheme, which provides small amounts of resource to help community-led local projects to progress.

Community-led involvement

The most effective, lasting solutions to environmental management are those that have strong community support and involvement. It is fundamental to the delivery of this strategy that initiatives are community-led wherever possible, with the Council’s role primarily being to provide support and facilitation to help communities achieve goals that they have identified themselves.

Development of Local Nature Reserves and provision of the trees and woodland grant scheme will provide a key aspect of this support. However, this approach is also applied in many respects to the Council’s contributions to more strategic areas such as the Limewoods and the Wolds AONB.

This strategy will strengthen and extend this approach, building on good practice already in place and establishing a clearly articulated and consistent

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methodology for supporting local people to become more involved and to take more of a leading role in managing Lincolnshire’s natural environment.

This will include setting out a consistent approach to involvement in, and contribution to, Local Nature Reserves, local sites and small grants programmes, that links and strengthens delivery of long term priorities through strategic areas and sites.

Strategic Partnerships

Lincolnshire County Council’s work on the natural environment is almost entirely delivered through partnership arrangements, whether with community groups, or businesses or with partner organisations.

In this respect, Council resource is best deployed largely to lever in additional external and local partner contributions, and to unlock resources in funds or in kind that might otherwise not be accessible. For this reason, the Council will focus on supporting key strategic partnerships in a facilitating and enabling role.

Towards a Local Nature Partnership

Countywide, the Council is closely involved in supporting the Lincolnshire Biodiversity Partnership as an essential part of delivering its statutory obligation to have regard to biodiversity in delivering its services.

The Government has recently launched a programme of establishing Local Nature Partnerships across the country, intended to link with the Local Enterprise Partnerships established in 2010. Local Nature Partnerships are envisaged as all-encompassing bodies, with wider remit than is currently delivered through the National and Local Biodiversity Action Plans.

The Lincolnshire Biodiversity Partnership has been awarded Government funding to explore the potential for changing into a Local Nature Partnership covering the whole of the historic county of Lincolnshire. The Council will support the Partnership in this project, as an important step in developing a common strategic approach to managing the natural environment countywide.

The Lincolnshire Wolds AONB

The Lincolnshire Wolds AONB is managed by the Lincolnshire Wolds Countryside Service, which is hosted by the Council and its work directed by the partnership Lincolnshire Wolds AONB Joint Advisory Committee, of which the Council is a member. Delivery of the priorities set out in the statutory Wolds Management Plan is directed on behalf of the Joint Advisory Committee by the Joint Management Group.

This arrangement is a key part of promoting a more joined-up approach countywide, because of the opportunities it offers to link with wider strategic approaches to developing tourism agenda, education, providing access to

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open space and, as a fundamental principle, working with local communities, businesses and the agricultural sector.

As a holistic service, management of the AONB sees local communities and businesses, their culture and history, as fundamental to the making and maintenance of the Wolds environment as it is today. This approach, which is also evident in the delivery of the Lincolnshire Limewoods project (see below), is embedded in the direction outlined in The Natural Choice , and will promoted by this Strategy as a core principle of the Council’s long term objectives.

The Lincolnshire Limewoods Project and the Coastal Country Park

Lincolnshire County Council, with its partners, has delivered a successful programme of management of the nationally important ancient woodland in the Lincolnshire Limewoods, exemplifying the community-led and focused approach outlined above. This Strategy will build on this successful programme of work to maximise external funding to meet its outcomes and objectives.

The development of the Coastal Country Park is based on similar principles, aiming to provide greater accessibility and public use of a coastal landscape, managed for the benefit of people and wildlife. As a long term project, in conjunction with the Wolds, the Limewoods and other nationally significant sites, this provides opportunities to maximise the attraction of Lincolnshire’s environment for visitors, as well as for local people.

Working jointly with the Lincolnshire Grazing Marshes Project , hosted by District Council, restoration of high quality wildlife habitat will undertaken in the interests of community and economic benefit for Lincolnshire as a whole.

Strategic sites

The Council supports partnership groups overseeing management of key sites such as Gibraltar Point National Nature Reserve, the Snipe Dales nature reserve and country park, and the Whisby Nature reserve. The Council provides funding to the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust to manage Gibraltar Point and Snipe Dales on its behalf, and will develop a Service Level Agreement with the Trust in accordance with the outcomes and objectives set out in this Strategy.

Lincolnshire County Council as a ‘Relevant Authority’

Some sites, particularly the Humber Estuary and the Wash are considered so significant as wildlife and plant habitats that they are designated under European law. As well as providing very stringent protection, this also places a statutory duty on the County Council as a ‘relevant authority’ to contribute to the continuing protection of these sites. This will be discharged for the Humber through the Humber Relevant Authorities Group, and will be closely

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linked to the Council’s work on flood risk management for the estuary through the Humber Estuary Strategy Group. Support for the Wash will be provided by funding the Wash Estuary Management Group.

A joined up approach

Partnership is essential to successful delivery of this Strategy’s outcomes and objectives. While the broad approach to partnership working has been outlined throughout the Strategy, it is important also to emphasise the linkages that will be required between services areas within the Council, and with individual partner organisations.

Internally the natural environment cannot be considered in isolation from the built and historic environment, which already form important elements in the delivery of the Wolds Management Plan, the Limewoods Project and the Coastal Country Park.

This Strategy will aim to embed these linkages further across the county. Links to Spatial Planning and the development of green infrastructure projects will be essential in seeking to promote connections between areas and sites, while the economic benefits offered by a joined-up, consistent approach to tourism and promotion of Lincolnshire’s environment as a whole are also a key objective.

External partner organisations critical to the success of this approach include Natural England, the Environment Agency, the Forestry Commission, the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust, District Councils and the numerous partners that contribute to the success of the Lincolnshire Biodiversity Partnership.

Together with the Joint Lincolnshire Flood Risk and Drainage Management Strategy, the Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy and the County Council’s emerging Climate Change Strategy, this Strategy will form part of an overarching strategic framework, with the aim of establishing an integrated, co-ordinated approach for all of the County Council’s environmental services, set in the context of wider partnership objectives across the county.

Delivery

The Strategy will be delivered by

• Supporting implementation of the Lincolnshire Biodiversity Action Plan • Supporting development of a Local Nature Partnership for Lincolnshire • Delivering the Lincolnshire Wolds AONB Management Plan • Implementing the Council’s priorities through the Strategic Partnerships for the Wolds AONB, Gibraltar Point and Snipe Dales • Developing further community involvement in protecting, enhancing and promoting the Lincolnshire Limewoods area • Delivery of the Coastal Country Park programme • Comprehensive review and revision of all relevant Agreements, SLAs, and MoAs

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• Development of techniques for demonstrating economic, health and social benefits of managing the natural environment • Developing effective links with green infrastructure, built heritage and cultural strategies • Meeting the requirements of the Water Framework Directive • Identifying and securing external funding for existing and potential strategic assets • Developing and further establishing a consistent community-led approach to public engagement and involvement through Local Nature Reserves, Community Wildlife Grants and other methods. • Working in partnership with relevant areas of LCC and external organisations.

Strategy review process

The Strategy is designed to form part of a suite with the Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy, the Climate Change Strategy and the Joint Flood Risk and Drainage Management Strategy. Together, these will form the core of the emerging Lincolnshire County Council Environmental Management Strategy, which will also set out how strong links will be made with relevant service areas across the authority to develop a holistic approach to all aspects of the Council’s delivery of environmental management, including its specific contribution in the wider partnership context

Annex: Key drivers

Government White Paper, The Natural Choice UK Biodiversity Action Plan Lincolnshire Biodiversity Action Plan Habitats Directive Birds Directive CRoW Act 2000 NERC Act 2006 Lincolnshire Wolds Management Plan LCC Climate Change Strategy Lincolnshire Joint Flood Risk Management Strategy Joint Municipal Waste Strategy Green Infrastructure Strategy Water Framework Directive Water White Paper Biodiversity 2020 Localism Bill

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