Overview
While not a campaigning organisation, OLNP seeks to influence decision-making, putting nature at the heart of all policy areas where it can bring positive benefits. Better incorporating nature into the planning system is a key way in which to ensure nature is embedded in our built environment, delivering vital supporting services for society and providing health and wellbeing benefits to those who live and work in the local area, whilst also providing ecological connectivity and biodiversity uplift.
What we're doing
The Oxfordshire Local Nature Partnership's Nature Policy group has developed a checklist to enable the partnership to quickly and consistently engage with, and respond to consultations for, strategic plans and strategies such as Local Plans. This will be published and freely available, allowing LNP partners and wider stakeholders to understand our position on matters of policy.
This checklist is a way of ensuring the LNP's voice in such matters is consistently applied, transparently communicated, and widely understood at the earliest stages of drafting plans and strategies.
Related publications
Towards a nature-first neighbourhood plan
Neighbourhood plans can play an important role in protecting and restoring your local nature. Oxfordshire Local Nature Partnership has created this document to help inform thinking about the types of policy that might be developed for a given Neighbourhood Plan (NP). It includes policy examples from existing neighbourhood plans, and guidance on the steps to take when developing a draft neighbourhood plan.
Oxfordshire Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) guiding principles
The Oxfordshire Local Nature Partnership proposes that Oxfordshire's Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) adopt the principles the working group, which includes representatives from local authority planning departments, have developed for Biodiversity Net Gain implementation.
The intent of these principles is to ensure that Biodiversity Net Gain is implemented in a way that supports the spirit of the Environment Act 2021 and maximises Biodiversity Net Gain’s potential impact on nature recovery in Oxfordshire. They are designed to facilitate a harmonised approach across all local authority areas, recognising that some local variations may be inevitable and indeed beneficial. Our aspiration is that they will provide a common framework within which local authorities, developers, conservation bodies, farmers and landowners work together to protect and restore our county’s nature.
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