Berkshire's Local Nature Recovery Strategy

Updates on the Local Nature Recovery Strategy regularly posted here. 

Update January 2024

The Berkshire Local Nature Recovery Strategy is truly underway!

Stakeholder Engagement Events

We are excited to be beginning work with Just Ideas, who have been commissioned for creation of engagement strategy, delivery of strategy including 11 workshops and evaluation. In March, 3 workshops will be focussed at farmers, land owners and woodland managers – where as well as finding out priorities for nature we will be providing support on Biodiversity Net Gain and registering interest in signing up to the LNRS. 6 workshops in April will be spread across each Berkshire Borough, to work with local communities in finding out their priorities for nature. 1 workshop will be online also. This engagement will be accompanied by a survey where stakeholders can further engage with their thoughts on nature recovery in Berkshire. Finally, during a summer an informative, Berkshire wide event will take place, engaging people with the progress of the strategy and collecting feedback. 

Just Ideas, an engagement and facilitation company based in Reading, are supporting our stakeholder engagement and workshop design and implementation. They have created our stakeholder engagement plan, are supporting the evaluation of the workshops and are a part of many of our working groups, ensuring that sound information is collected in workshops, to influence the creation of the strategy. 

Data Prioritisation

Feedback from these stakeholder events will form that basis of the outputs of the Local Nature Recovery Strategy, these are primarily the Opportunity Map and the List of Priorities. Berkshire will be inputting our data layers and targets for biodiversity, gathered from our stakeholder engagement, into a programme called Marxan. With the help of TVERC, we will create maps of the best areas for nature conservation, balancing the different locally specific priorities and challenges we face in Berkshire. TVERC are also helping to create our shortlist of priority species, these will help inform our priorities for nature as well. 

After our maps and lists are complete, these will be combined with our Description of the Area of Berkshire, and will create the final LNRS document. After being checked by our supporting authorities and the RBWM Cabinet, the strategy is predicted to be published in Spring 2025.