So far in 2023, we’ve been having a nosey at some Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs), and their condition – see here. We wrote to Natural England about one site in particular called Dendles Wood, found on Dartmoor.
From their response (see here) we’ve concluded that it’s in a bit of a sorry state; pheasants were being released very close to it, it hadn’t been assessed since 2011, and its current management plan had expired in 2020. This got us thinking.
So, earlier this spring, we wrote to Natural England under the Freedom of Information regulations. In our letter, we asked for some information about all Sites of Special Scientific Interest in England. This is what we said in our email to them:
Dear Natural England
We write to request information under the Environmental Information Regulations and/or Freedom of Information Act regulations.
Our request is in relation to Biological Sites of Special Scientific Interest within England. Specifically, please provide:
A list of all Biological SSSIs in England, the county in which they are found, their constituent Units, the size in hectares of each Unit, the condition (Favourable, Unfavourable Recovering etc) of each unit and the year in which each SSSI Unit’s condition was assessed by Natural England. All of this information is publicly available but we would ask for the data in electronic format (such as an Excel file) so that they can be analysed easily. Please provide the information so that each SSSI Unit is a row in the file which contains information for each unit on the constituent SSSI and the condition and date of assessment of the Unit.
These are data that Natural England must hold electronically, they are publicly available on your website, and so we assume that it is a minor task to extract these data and provide them in the requested form. However, we would be prepared to pay reasonable costs of data extraction.
Please meet this request inside, well inside, the maximum allowable period of 20 working days. Many thanks, Wild Justice
Whilst the information we asked for is available online, it is only accessible as individual web pages for each SSSI, and is therefore in a format that makes it difficult to assess. The information we asked for included:
A list of all Biological SSSIs in England
The county in which they are found
Their constituent Units
The size in hectares of each Unit
The condition (Favourable, Unfavourable Recovering etc) of each unit
The year in which each SSSI Unit’s condition was assessed by Natural England.
Well, we’re please to say that last week we heard back from Natural England, following our FOI request. You can see their response below. Now we have these data (and it’s quite a lot of data) we’ll be looking at what they tell us about SSSI condition in England. Watch this space…
