Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill

moved Amendment No. 300:"After Clause 54, insert the following new clause—" ““DENOTIFICATION    In section 28D of the 1981 Act (denotification), in subsection (1), for ““no longer”” substitute ““not””.”” The noble Lord said: By virtue of the improvements brought about to the SSSI legislation by the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, Parliament enabled the conservation bodies to remove the SSSI status of land where it was no longer appropriate for the regime to apply, for example where the interests might be lost irretrievably to lawful developments or natural changes. However, there is also the possibility that very occasionally an area of land might be included within a notified SSSI boundary that is not of special interest and never was. With advances in technology and the digitising of geographic information in place of good old paper maps, it is possible that cartographic discrepancies or errors could arise. Therefore, Amendment No. 300 removes the implication in the current provision that the power can only be used to denotify land that was at some point of special interest in its own right. It is a small facilitating amendment that avoids the need for more complex solutions, should any landowner discover that some of his land was included within a SSSI in error. Amendment No. 301 is intended to provide clarity for the future and to further improve the legislative framework that Natural England will inherit. The SSSI legislation requires that notifications relating to the site must be served on every owner or occupier of the land in question or, in relation to certain of the requirements, affected by the notification. The relevant provisions, as significantly expanded through the CROW Act, are listed in subsection (2). This amendment introduces a saving to ensure that a SSSI notification, given after commencement, remains valid should it later be discovered that some relevant party’s interests were not identified when the notification was served. It was by strong desire of Parliament, during the passage of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, that the original requirement to notify every owner and occupier of land to be made a SSSI was imposed on the conservation bodies. While nobody today would sensibly argue against the principle behind that, it is, on the face of the legislation, a tall order, despite best efforts, to identify all relevant interests, particularly on large or complex sites. The significant enhancements to the regime introduced by the 2000 Act mean that government and their delivery bodies will be investing much of their public resources in protecting and managing these sites. As the Committee knows, we have set ourselves a challenging but admirable PSA target to bring 95 per cent of SSSI areas into favourable or recovering condition by 2010. Achieving that is also drawing down on significant commitment from private landowners, public utilities and a range of other bodies. We should therefore take steps to minimise any risks that would unreasonably undermine that. In Scotland similar action was taken in 2004 where Section 48 of the Nature Conservation (Scotland) Act addresses the same point. As we are now in the business of laying the foundations for Natural England to take over these responsibilities from English Nature, we have concluded that it would be right to take this opportunity to provide a similar safeguard for England and Wales. By way of seeking a balance between the interests of owners and occupiers on the one hand and those of the public on the other the amendment would be effective only if the conservation bodies have taken all reasonable steps to ensure that the requirement to serve notification on every owner or occupier is met. Where that is the case, we believe it is right to provide that the validity of the site should be preserved. Where that is not the case, the courts will determine the issue according to the circumstances. In the event of discovering a party whose existence or identity was unknown at the time of service of the notification, subsection (4) removes any doubt as to whether and at what point the notification is to be treated as served, and subsections (5) and (6) require that a copy of any notification be served on such a person once they have come to light and ensure that they will not be liable for anything done or not done prior to that point in time under the offence of carrying out damaging operations without the consent of the conservation bodies. We believe that this reflects a pragmatic and realistic approach to the duty in the legislation, recognising both the practicalities of the task faced by the conservation bodies themselves and the importance of safeguarding the status of sites which many individuals and other bodies have managed and conserved. I beg to move.