Recommendation 48

We welcome the Government’s ambition to create a national Nature Recovery Network but believe far more detail is needed to translate this ambition into transformative action. The Nature Recovery Network (NRN) is contained in the 25 Year Environment Plan, but there are currently no duties or actionable plans in place to create it. The Government needs a co-ordinated approach to ensure all the local nature recovery strategies (LNRS) together cover the whole of England. This requires national oversight and strategy. Given local authorities will design and deliver most of the Local Nature Recovery Strategies (LNRS), they must be given greater resource to do so, including to employ local authority ecologists and having better access to ecological data. To realise this national vision the NRN also must be integrated and prioritised within the context of new planning reforms. And the Government needs to set out its thinking on how the host of proposed environmental and planning policies will come together into one cohesive strategy.