Examination of Witnesses (Questions 56-59)
MR MIKE
OXFORD, MR
MURRAY DAVIDSON
AND MR
DAVID PAPE
22 MARCH 2004
Q56 Chairman: May I welcome our final
group of witnesses this afternoon. On behalf of the Association
of Local Government Ecologists and the Local Government Association
we have Mike Oxford, who I believe is the Association of Local
Government Ecologists' project officer, and from Hastings Borough
Council Murray Davidson, and from Hampshire County Council, David
Pape. Now, local authorities do have special responsibilities
in relation to SSSIs under Section 28(g), special responsibilities
to "take reasonable steps, consistent with the proper exercise
of their functions, to further the conservation and enhancement
of the features for which an SSSI has been notified". Also,
between you, you local authorities own something like 47,000 hectares
of SSSI land. In your evidence to us you talk understandably about
the pressure on resources on local government and the way that
affects local authorities' ability to carry out their responsibilities,
but you also say that you can identify three groups of authorities—those
for which management of SSSIs is not an issue because they have
not got any; secondly, exemplar authorities that are consciously
endeavouring to improve the condition of their SSSIs in line with
the PSA target; thirdly, authorities with SSSI land holdings for
whom management is not an actual or a perceived priority. Could
you firstly give us some idea of what proportion of authorities
fall into each of those three groups that you have mentioned?
Mr Oxford: We can try and it is
an early informed estimate, really. We believe there are between
100 and 200 authorities that probably do not own SSSIs. There
are then somewhere around 200 local authorities that we know do
own SSSIs because they have entered into some form of management
agreement for their SSSI land, and it is an interesting statistic
that there are somewhere in the order of about 140 councils which
are districts, cities or boroughs that own somewhere in the order
of just in excess of 25,000 hectares. That came as quite a surprise
because we imagined that the county councils would have been one
of the prime owners and we currently believe that somewhere in
the order of 35 county councils own in excess of 8,000 hectares.
Now there is another proportion of SSSI land in local authority
ownership which is not in any form of management agreement and
we cannot really give you any information on that, so it gives
us a fairly wide margin of error but, as a very broad figure,
that is the statistic in terms of authorities that do not own
any land, and the districts and so on that do. I will let my colleagues
elaborate on the exemplar and more typical authorities.
Mr Pape: I cannot give you figures
on what proportion of local authorities are exemplar, although
the paper that has been produced shows you that they are generally
in the minority because of the resources given to local authorities.
If I can just give you a few figures for Hampshire because I believe
Hampshire is an exemplar authority, if you get a feel for what
Hampshire County Council is doing both on its own SSSIs but also
SSSIs in the wider countryside it does illustrate what an opportunity
is lost there in respect of other local authorities who do not
have the resources. Hampshire County Council has 25 SSSIs in its
ownership covering over 2,000 hectares; they range in size from
15 hectares to over 200 hectares for individual sites. From the
information that I gleaned so far from English Nature's assessments,
which is the majority of those 2,000 hectares, of Hampshire County
Council sites 93% are either in favourable condition or recovering,
so there is active progression to the favourable status. So that
is a high percentage. Only half of the sites are under some sort
of agreement. The resources required should not be underestimated
to manage these SSSIs. Certainly in Hampshire it is no less than
one and a quarter million to manage in a rounded way, providing
a public resource as well as just the physical management, so
certainly nothing less than one and a quarter million and that
is not including the amount of money that is accessed through
specific management agreements, so it is a considerable cost per
hectare for a local authority to maintain SSSIs in a favourable
condition, and provide a service. In addition, local authorities
do have the opportunity to input into SSSIs in the wider countryside,
and Hampshire County Council has been doing that. We have a number
of projects. We have project officers funded by the county council
such as the heathland project; a specific grazing project—because
in the lowlands a key issue is undergrazing causing problems to
SSSIs so we have a specific project to promote grazing; we have
a woodland project and a life funded project in the New Forest,
all of which the county council is either leading or in partnership,
but I stress leading. Just to give you a flavour, through the
heathland project we are putting into the wider countryside advice
and prescriptions for 1,733 hectares of SSSIs; under the grazing
project we are providing advice and support for 1,938 hectares.
This is above and beyond the county council's estate. I mention
those figures not to fly the flag for Hampshire County Council
but to demonstrate the potential role of a local authority within
a county. Of course we have English Nature and the Wildlife Trust,
one of the most active in the country, so the other agencies are
not deficient in any way, but it is taking a local authority to
draw on that partnership and facilitate not only on its own estate
but in the wider countryside, and therefore when most local authorities
do not really have an ecologist, particularly in the boroughs,
and it has been expressed that most of the SSSIs are in borough
or district ownership, it is a very big story and a huge opportunity
lost, so that is the message I would give from an exemplar authority.
There is a lot of opportunity but it is not being realised through
resources, or a clear statutory imperative of government guidance
cascading down to the local level.
Mr Davidson: I am putting in the
perspective of a district authority that has one ecologist, myself,
and I think I would be quite typical of an ecologist within a
borough or a district authority. In Hastings we own three SSSIs,
or the majority of them, and to date there has not been a political
or a senior management imperative to manage those areas. We manage
two of the SSSIs in conjunction with the Wildlife Trust, and one
of the others was subject to agricultural pollution round about
2000 and English Nature basically threatened Hastings borough
council with prosecution under the impending Countryside and Rights
of Way Act at that time which focused minds very considerably.
I think it was very sad that it had to take an a negative issue
to bring about the local authorities starting to discuss what
their responsibilities were, realising what those responsibilities
were and how much they were going to cost them, and have to start
to think about the resource implications of the SSSI management.
We would find that local authorities that have an ecologist tend
to be ones where the ecologist is trying to find every means possible
to raise the profile of the management of their SSSIs, because
I think we will find that the political imperative and priority
is not for management of SSSIs. That is not high on the political
agenda and therefore it is not high on senior management's agenda
for resource implications.
Q57 Chairman: And you would say that
is true of a large number of authorities?
Mr Davidson: Very much so, yes.
Now that we have undertaken that recognition, we have put in something
like £200,000 odd over the next three years which is capital
money to bring a site up into a favourable condition and then
we are allocating resources, over £100,000 over five years
to maintain that favourable condition and undertake educational
opportunities and the peripheral opportunities that are associated
with the actual management of the habitats as well.
Mr Oxford: Just adding to that,
when ALGE consulted its members to ask for volunteers to come
to the Committee today I do not think people were daunted by meeting
you; it was when we put the question, "Can you come along
and talk as an exemplar authority", that David was just about
the only person who stepped forward! Surrey County Council are
the only other authority I know which have somewhere in the same
order or a number of SSSIs who spend the same kind of money and
are looking at the same sort of service for management of their
SSSIs, so I think there is anecdotal evidence that the exemplars
are in a small minority.
Q58 Chairman: Mr Pape, you referred to
a figure of £1.25 million for the work that Hampshire is
doing at the moment.
Mr Pape: It is a broad estimate,
yes.
Q59 Chairman: Is that what you need to
do the work, or is that what you are spending because that is
what you are given at the moment?
Mr Pape: I think I would conclude
that that is possibly generally what we need because we are pretty
much there with the percentage in terms of the target. I did not
include in that figure the money that we are receiving through
the management agreements. I would also point to a future scenario
though, which we might get on to later, which is that, as I understand
it, because of the interpretation of the CROW Act and the obligation
for local authorities to maintain a favourable condition, funding
in the future may not be available to local authorities for maintenance
of condition. Restoration, rehabilitating a site—yes, but
there is a great question mark over whether other statutory agencies
will be funding local authorities for maintenance, so there is
going to be a much higher cost for local authorities to bear in
the future, I believe, if that interpretation is taken to its
logical conclusion.
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