Berkshire's Local Nature Recovery Strategy

Now is a really exciting time for nature.

Call to action

We would like people to send the locations of parcels of land that would be suitable for additional nature recovery measures or management. This will help create a layer of areas more likely to be selected in our final map of prioritised locations.

This applies to landowners and land managers, but also to community groups and individuals planning nature projects in specific areas.

Please note, we are specifically looking for areas that could undertake nature recovery work, not areas which are already being managed for nature.

If you possess maps: as GIS layers, PDFs or a scan of a hand annotated map, please email these to rosie.street@rbwm.gov.uk. Otherwise, drop pins on our online map, and write in some detail about the boundary of the land you are talking about.

Detail on specific actions nature recovery actions that could be done are welcome too!

Please be aware, land identified here will not automatically be included in our Berkshire LNRS. However, these parcels of land will have a greater chance of inclusion by our modelling programme. Learn more about this in our webinar here.

Remember, land in the Berkshire Local Nature Recovery Strategy receives an extra 15% uplift in Biodiversity Net Gain. This means LNRS maps are used to determine the ‘strategic significance’ score in the BNG metric which gives additional unit values to habitats located in preferred locations for biodiversity and other environmental objectives. And land identified isn’t under any obligations for action - everything is voluntary.

The deadline for this is 24th June. Please send us all information by the end of this date.

We need to think about where Berkshire nature needs our help the most and how people can benefit from giving nature a hand. Help us decide.

Local Nature Recovery Strategies (LNRSs) are spatial strategies to recover nature across England: part of the 2021 Environment Act. Together, they will cover the country in a Nature Recovery Network (NRN).

The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead are excited to be the Responsible Authority (RA) for our Berkshire LNRS. Bracknell, Reading, Slough, West Berkshire and Wokingham are supporting authorities with Natural England. They are helping to contribute to the strategy. Updates on the progress of the LNRS are posted below.

Visualisation of stakeholder views on Berkshire Nature Recovery. Credits to Natalie Ganpatsingh.

Each LNRS will map areas of current particular importance for biodiversity, and work with partners from many groups, from landowners to businesses, to eNGOs, and the public. Priorities for nature recovery will be agreed and these will be used to create a local habitat map. These will depict what needs to happen to achieve the agreed aims for nature. This will link up with delivery mechanisms, such as Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) for planning and Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes for land management including farming.

Find a blog here from Natural England for more information on Local Nature Recovery Strategies.