Well the salary's pretty splendid but that aside why would anyone choose to be Chief Executive of Natural England? It can't be much fun having to make so many anodyne statements while trying to balance irreconcilable aims. Well Dr Helen Phillips whose Head Office is in Sheffield has a piece in the Guardian today responding to the editorial previously alluded to here. So many of the issues about people going into the countryside are illustrated on Blacka Moor, that Blacka Blogger has written asking her to come along and be shown round. It could be very interesting.
See here for the report published yesterday. Thanks to Mark.
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Philips got into a bit of a pickle over her salary when she was questioned by the Public Accounts Committee back in February (their report was published yesterday). However, that is a minor point compared to her defence to the committee when they said that Natural England did know how much had been spent on SSSIs, and how much would be spent in the future (they could not provide evidence of value for money); that NE could not demonstrate that all SSSIs still demonstrate features of special importance; that NE's record keeping was inconsistent; that their reported performance in managing SSSIs is based on out of date information and incomplete records; and that the current approach of designating individual locations or sites may not be the most appropriate.
As we know with Blackamoor, the SSSI designation was erroneous in the first place since it was based on the need to catch up on the fact that Blackamoor had been included in a EU Special Protection Area for upland birds - that don't even exist on the moor. Moreover, the SSSI notification did not take account of the woodland element, such that when rigorous standards for monitoring of SSSI were brought in in 2003, the woodland element on the moor was doomed to felling. Blackamoor being handed over to SWT was just adding insult to injury.
It is a pity that the Public Accounts Committee didn't have anyone with a detailed knowledge of these flaws in the SSSI system. If they had, they would have known a bit more about Messingham Heath SSSI, one of the examples that was raised by the PAC as evidence that NE wasn't doing its job. NE has spent 10 years trying to get the owner to chop down the trees on this "coversands heath" near Scunthorpe. If it is an important heath, why did NE notify it as "acid pasture, lowland"? Under monitoring standards, acid pasture doesn't have much heathland. As is so often the case, at least a third of this SSSI has established woodland on it, which is now doomed by a felling license for the site and monitoring standards that say that acid pasture has to have less than 5% of scattered trees. It would be the same if it was actually notified as heath.
Must be heartening to know that the NE head office is nearby to Blackamoor, and to know what an exemplary organisation they are!
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