With protecting our natural environment increasingly at the forefront of many people’s minds, one agenda item at this Tuesday evening’s Rushcliffe Borough Council (RBC) Cabinet Meeting is attracting particular interest amongst villagers.
On September 28th last year, Prime Minister Boris Johnson signed the ‘Leaders Pledge For Nature’ at the United Nations Summit on Biodiversity, along with 64 other countries, seeking to reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. The pledge states: “We are in a state of planetary emergency: the interdependent crises of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation and climate change”. The Chartered Institute for Ecology and Environmental Management (CIEEM) says “that the climate emergency and biodiversity crisis are inextricably linked and must be addressed together. Restoring biodiversity has the potential to … mitigate against the effects of climate change, through enhancing
carbon-storing habitats”. CIEEM called for “action … through nature-based solutions”.
One of the outcomes of this pledge locally is a new, 51 page, draft document called Rushcliffe Nature Conservation Strategy 2021 – 2025, which you can find >>HERE<<. It details the principal wildlife habitats found in the Borough, and a series of objectives to preserve, protect and enhance them. These include Rushcliffe Country Park, Wilwell Farm Cutting and Sharphill Wood. With FOUR major new housing developments taking place on Ruddington’s former Green Belt as part of the Rushcliffe Local Plan Part 2 this seems especially relevant right now. Questions are already being asked about why planning permissions granted to developers by Rushcliffe Borough Council have allowed the ripping out of mature hedgerows (such as along Asher Lane, above), felling of trees (such as the old Ash tree behind Musters Road, below), encroachment on Sites of Special Scientific Interest and other destruction of natural habitat which could perhaps have been avoided.
The proposed strategy emphasises the importance of avoiding harm and providing environmental gain, meeting the aims of sustainable development, and the need to provide a high quality environment in which people can live and work. It is receiving the support of Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust, Nottinghamshire Biodiversity Action Group and Nottinghamshire County Council as well as Ruddington Borough Councillors Jen Walker and Mike Gaunt.
Bizarrely, our representatives are not actually permitted to ask questions at this meeting, however village residents are…
Ruddington’s Rebecca Collison says: “The sixth objective of the Rushcliffe Nature Conservation Strategy is to ‘Seek to ensure positive impact (Biodiversity Net Gain) of development on wildlife and biodiversity whilst eliminating negative impact’ and the report sets out six initiatives designed to meet this objective, including a reference to local planning policy and using Hedgerow Regulations and Tree Preservation Orders. Without meaningful targets however to measure the councils performance in protecting biodiversity and hedgerows on large housing developments, residents are blind to what we may be losing.”
Rebecca asks “Would the Council consider including measurable targets:
- setting a minimum 10% biodiversity net gain target to be included as a condition in all large site planning permissions and including the 10% biodiversity net gain target for large site developments in the conservation strategy document,
- setting a target in the conservation strategy of zero net loss of hedgerows in Rushcliffe as a result of large housing development,
- making a commitment to publishing hedgerow and biodiversity net gains / losses annually for large housing developments in Rushcliffe.”
Village resident and Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust member Geoff East says: “Having read through the updated Rushcliffe Nature Conservation Strategy; 2021-2025, I am heartened by the importance our Council is putting on the fight against habitat loss and climate change. I would agree that it is important to encourage creation of new sites and nature’s recovery requires us to link and connect sites to allow the spread of wild native plants and animals. Hedges and grassy verges are nature’s highways, so yes, we should be seeking to protect areas and encourage sympathetic management of our grassland.” Geoff asks: “Would the Borough add a KPI to their Natural Conservation Strategy that includes a numerical target for councils to reduce, and eventually stop altogether, the use of herbicides and pesticides throughout our Parishes and WB wards?”
To find out what answers members of RBC’s Cabinet give to these questions – and plenty of others – villagers have the opportunity to watch their virtual Zoom meeting via ‘live stream’ on YouTube on Tuesday, 9th February 2021 from 7.00pm by visiting https://www.youtube.com/user/RushcliffeBC.
We’re advised that, until the meeting starts, the live stream video will not
be showing on RBC’s homepage. For this reason, you should keep refreshing the page until you the see the video appear.
