Orchard Network

At the National level, the Government sets out its overarching guidance in a series of Planning Policy Statements and Planning Policy Guidance.

Planning Policy Statement 9: Biodiversity and Geological Conservation (PPS9) is the most important of these for nature conservation issues and includes the following instructions regarding Local Development Frameworks:

“Local authorities should take an integrated approach to planning for biodiversity and geodiversity when preparing local development documents. They should ensure that policies in local development documents reflect, and are consistent with, national, regional and local biodiversity priorities and objectives (including those agreed by local biodiversity partnerships).”

Local Biodiversity Partnerships are the organisations that develop local versions of the United Kingdom Biodiversity Action Plan and identify habitats of local as well as national importance to the conservation of biodiversity. PPS9 goes on to advise that Local Development Frameworks should:

“Identify any areas or sites for the restoration or creation of new priority habitats which contribute to regional targets, and support this restoration or creation through appropriate policies.”

PPS9: A Guide to Good Practice (2006) recommends that Local Planning Authorities adopt policies with a presumption to retain those habitats that are not only the subject of statutory protection, but also ones which may be county wildlife sites or have UK and/or Local Biodiversity Action Plans. Veteran trees are singled out in the guidelines as being of particular value, as is the importance of protecting smaller sites to act as "stepping stones" between major habitats of biodiversity value; a proposal latterly known as Ecological Networks.

National Links

PPS9: Biodiversity & Geological Conservation

PPS9: A guide to good practice