Local Authority Nature Recovery Toolkit

The Environment Act is here - are you prepared?
Do you need help navigating through the government’s nature recovery requirements and the process for delivery?

Local authorities are responsible for delivering a number of new statutory nature recovery duties including Biodiversity Net Gain, Biodiversity Reporting and Local Nature Recovery Strategies and for these to be delivered successfully local authorities will need to be able to articulate their role in delivering wider corporate and strategic priorities.

As part of the Natural England Nature Recovery Network project PAS have been developing a nature recovery “self-serve” toolkit to help local authorities take full advantage of the opportunities for turning its statutory ‘must do’s’ into opportunities for the whole council to deliver on its strategic and corporate ambitions on health, air quality, climate change, adaptation etc.

The toolkit focusses on council priorities, the land that they hold, the services they deliver and explores how nature can act as a enabler for these and the quick wins that can be made. Our approach is rooted in establishing a strong governance process as a means of demonstrating to the wider council how a strategic approach to nature can help address wider corporate issues.

There are a number of advantages that can be delivered as a result of using toolkit including:

• Across the council / political buy-in and joining up work across departments.
• Read-across into other plans and strategies and streamlining benefits.
• A clearer understanding of how to deliver change, saving costs and securing additional funding. 
• Better Local Nature Recovery Strategy production readiness, with a clearer picture of the issues, opportunities and how to tackle them.
• A shortlist of priority activities and interventions that can start to be delivered.

Our approach is rooted in establishing a strong governance process as a means of demonstrating to the wider council how a strategic approach to nature can help address wider corporate issues.
 

The toolkit includes a number of key components including:

• A workshop planning tool which sets out a suggested pattern of how a series of engagement workshops can be organised and delivered. 
• Training modules (slidedecks or recordings) to introduce people who might not be familiar with this area and to lead them to think about why it matters and what they can do about it.  
• A series of technical appendices including a useful “action” template setting out council activities, assets and responsibilities as well as useful data layers which can be used to inform conversations, identify opportunities and set priorities as part of workshop delivery.
   

The toolkit has been designed to be a “self serve” process which can be easily adapted by local authorities to: 

• Engage with the right stakeholders 
• Work with stakeholders to decide what to do
• Understand the oversight and governance requirements for your chosen priorities

Local authorities can choose how they want to deliver the toolkit which can be adapted and localised to meet local needs. Some local authorities may feel they want to engage with key partners more informally on a 1:1 basis whilst others may want to bring together a group of key partners through a more structured process i.e. pre work, inception, workshops etc.

PAS are holding three regional in-person roadshow events in March for local authority officers to find out more about the draft nature recovery toolkit that we have been developing, the resources that have been developed so far and how to use them.

These all day events are taking place in Manchester on 12th March, Birmingham on 14th March and London on 21st March. Numbers at each event will be capped at 25 and will be restricted to one officer per local authority. To find out more and sign up click here.

In advance of these events we have sent delegates a draft ‘train the trainer’ recording for the Workshop #1 ‘Priorities and Opportunities’ workshop together with a copy of the draft slides to review.

The recording is just over an hour long so if you are limited for time we have split this into three parts:
Part 1: Welcome and introductions (00:00-17:03)
Part 2: Scene setting (17:04-51:38)
Part 3: Discussion and break out sessions (51:39-103:57)

The toolkit is constantly evolving so the roadshow events also provide an opportunity to hear from local authorities about their own nature recovery ambitions and progress to date to inform further development and improvement.