Natural England - Natural England’s response to the Independent review of the evidence process for selecting marine Special Areas of Conservation

Natural England’s response to the Independent review of the evidence process for selecting marine Special Areas of Conservation

19 December 2011

As the Government’s statutory adviser on Nature Conservation, it is important that stakeholders are able to trust the evidence that Natural England uses to underpin all of our advice.

On 21 July, Defra published a report on the findings of an independent review commissioned by the Chief Scientific Adviser of selected case studies relating to the identification of candidate and possible marine Special Areas of Conservation (SACs).

This was in response to questions raised by some stakeholders about Natural England’s marine evidence and advice. The stakeholders’ main concerns were about the transparency and rigour of some of the processes applied by Natural England to the evidence underpinning identification of marine cSACs, submitted by Defra to the European Commission on 20 August 2010.

Natural England welcomed the publication of the report, and you can read our response to the review and the changes that have been made in response to the review’s suggestions.