Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Fourteenth Report


5 Funding

38. The availability of funding seems to be at the heart of whether the PSA target will be met. The target could be met through direct funding of EN or through wider policy changes; in either case any reduction in resources is likely to put SSSIs at greater risk.

39. Although this year's Departmental budgets have not yet been announced, it is expected that Defra's budget will be reduced and that therefore EN's grant-in-aid will not be as high as it had hoped.[44] The Government and EN had agreed milestones for improving the condition of SSSIs based on a certain level of grant-in-aid. EN told us that, if that aid were to be reduced, the milestones were likely to be missed.[45]

40. The Minister for Nature Conservation and Fisheries told us that he did not believe the reduced funding posed a serious threat to the target and said that, although the target was challenging, he was confident that it would be met.[46] We welcome the Minister for Nature Conservation and Fisheries's confidence that the SSSI target will be met. However, the PSA target is already very challenging; we are concerned that if funding for English Nature is reduced in the 2004 Spending Review, the target will prove impossible to meet. If, as is expected, English Nature's grant-in-aid is less than that on which the interim milestones were agreed, English Nature should report to us on the impact of reduced funding on work on SSSIs.


44   Q143 Back

45   Ev 43 [English Nature] Back

46   Qq144, 159 Back


 
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