Corporate report

Marine conservation advice: project summary

Updated 27 September 2017

Applies to England

1. Conservation advice: Natural England’s responsibility

Natural England has a statutory responsibility to provide conservation advice for all Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) within English territorial waters. MPA designations in these waters are European Marine Sites (EMS) (Special Areas of Conservation and Special Protection Areas) Ramsar Sites and Marine Conservation Zones.

1.1 Marine Protected Areas: designated sites

MPAs are designated in English territorial waters (0 – 12 nautical miles) to protect features of national and international importance. These features may be habitats, species or geological. Conservation advice is provided to support authorities with a statutory responsibility to manage MPAs to put in place appropriate measures so that favourable condition of each MPA feature is achieved.

2. Natural England’s MPA conservation advice project

Natural England is undertaking this project to make sure that it provides conservation advice that is clear, easily understood and meets the needs of the organisations and individuals that use it.

This project forms part of wider work by Natural England, with the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, to improve the information it makes available on the conservation objectives for England’s terrestrial and marine designated sites.

2.1 Main objectives

As a response to the requirements set out in the Report of the Habitats and Wild Birds Directives Implementation Review (Defra, March 2012) and European Commission guidance on conservation objectives Natural England will produce conservation objectives that are:

• up‐to‐date
• accessible
• allow applicants to assess the impact of their proposed development against them
• produce quantified targets for the species and natural habitats for which a site is designated, where possible

2.2 Group involvement

The project is led by Natural England. A stakeholder advisory group is a valued part of the project and involves representatives from Regulators, management groups, sea user groups and conservation organisations.

The project is committed to invite and consider all feedback on each advice package from those that must use it or have an interest in its content.

3. Advice production

For an up-to-date production timetable contact mcaproject@naturalengland.org.uk.

3.1 Prioritised advice

Natural England can’t produce advice for all MPAs at the same time. With agreement from Defra, advice production is being prioritised to satisfy the following criteria:

• sites which have a prioritised Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authorities (IFCA) or Marine Management Organisation (MMO) need for the revised approach to fisheries

• sites affected by:

  • National Strategic Infrastructure Projects
  • Defra’s ‘Top 40’ infrastructure projects
  • sites affected by agreements under the City Deals initiative
  • other activities that present a high risk of impacting a protected habitat or species
• designated sites where the features are in known to be in unfavourable condition
• risk of damage to the features that the sites have been designated for
• new MPAs designated from 2013 onwards which have no existing conservation advice
• EMS where advice has not been written for interest features added after designation, following the process of moderation

In some cases, local factors such as delivery of new evidence, planned changes to SPA boundaries and staff availability will mean that there are differences in the application of these criteria.

3.2 Cross-boundary designations

Natural England will work with the other statutory nature conservation bodies (the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), Natural Resources Wales (NRW) and Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH)) to determine the timetable for producing revised advice for cross-boundary designations.

3.3 Ramsar advice

Defra and Natural England have decided not to produce individual marine conservation advice for Ramsar sites but focus on high level conservation objectives (HLCOs) instead, because it’s considered that conservation advice available for overlapping EMS is sufficient to support the management of Ramsar interests.

When the HLCOs are published Natural England will list which EMS overlaps or coincides with the Ramsar site.

Any qualifying features not covered by the corresponding EMS conservation advice could have individual feature-based advice, if there’s an operational risk to not supplying the information. Natural England will decide on the best approach on a site-by-site basis.

3.4 MCZ advice

Advice for MCZs will not be provided at the point of designation as the criteria for prioritisation of advice set out above will be applied to all MPAs.

In the absence of formal conservation advice, Natural England have agreed with Defra, the MMO and IFCA that regulators will draw upon existing available evidence to inform their management decisions, supplemented by local knowledge from our staff in area teams.

4. Contact Natural England

If you have any questions or comments about the timetable or Natural England’s work to produce conservation advice, email: mcaproject@naturalengland.org.uk