The Cumbria Local Sites Partnership and NI 197

1. The Cumbria Local Sites Partnership and NI 197 Richard Newman Environmental Planning Manager Cumbria County Council

2. Cumbria Local Sites Partnership (CLoSP) • Established April 2008 • Currently comprises: • Local Authorities (including National Parks) • Natural England • RIGS Group • Cumbria Wildlife Trust

3. Context

6. Strategic position of CLoSP

7. Environment and Heritage Thematic Partnership 1 To provide support to the Cumbria Strategic Partnership on environment and heritage matters: • Drawing the attention of the Partnership to key priorities and issues for action for both the CSP and its other Thematic Partnerships; • Supporting the Partnership in its championing of interest of Cumbria’s environment and heritage; • Supporting the Partnership in providing a Cumbria wide focus for environment and heritage issues. 2 To assist the further development of the environment and heritage elements of the Cumbria Local Area Agreement. 3 To have consideration in development work for the cross cutting outcomes of the Local Area Agreement. 4 To support the Partnership in performance managing an agreed set of actions arising from the Community Strategy and the Cumbria Local Area Agreement. 5 To have regard to the governance arrangements for the purposes of delivering the Local Area Agreement. This will include arrangements for decision making on partnership priorities and fund management. 6 Working with other Thematic Partnerships to secure sustainable development for Cumbria.

10. Calculating the baseline • “NI 197: Improved Local Biodiversity – proportion of Local Sites where positive conservation management has been or is being implemented.” • Local Sites = Local Wildlife Sites + RIGS • X/Y x 100 • Where X = No. sites in positive management. • Where Y = Total number of ratified sites.

11. Cumbria’s baseline and improvement targets • Baseline 27% of all local sites currently in positive management • Target 3% per annum • Outcome by the end of March 2011 33% of Cumbria’s local sites will be in positive management

12. Data collated for NI 197 reporting • Wildlife Site citations and RIGS translated into database format. • New GIS datasets: • Agri-environment schemes • Forestry schemes • Land ownership

13. CUMBRIA LOCAL SITES DATABASE SYSTEM Other GIS PLANNING DATABASE Deleted sites Potential new sites SURVEY REPORTS SITE IMAGES CMS Wildlife Sites RIGS GIS Wildlife Sites RIGS MAP LINK LIBRARY LINK Other Site Information WEBSITE REPORTS – CITATIONS RECORDER Biological Records Public Access Secure Restricted Access

16. Immediate benefits of new system development • Collation of historic data into useable form. • Clean-up of Wildlife Sites data; more accurate and detailed information for stakeholders. • Ability to query Wildlife Sites data on: • Ratification & survey status of sites. • Criteria for which sites selected. • NVC habitat codes (where available).

17. What next? • Further development of CMS. Large update Spring 2009. • Ownership module – collation of ownership data. • Development of reporting templates and batch production of reports. • Citations for all sites made available to partners on Web. • Get RECORDER data “cleaned-up” and linked to CMS. • Target wildlife sites for ratification and RIGS for monitoring

18. Summary • Purpose: to improve local biodiversity • Delivery body: CLoSP working with RIGS group. Wildlife Sites Selection Panel, BAP Partnership and Biodiversity Data Network • Performance measure: NI 197

19. And at a strategic level • Policy framework: Community Strategy • Policy delivery mechanism: Local Area Agreement • Performance evaluation: Comprehensive Area Assessment

20. But never forget the real purpose of all this….