The government’s wildlife watchdog for England is failing to halt the decline of nature after a sharp fall in the number of new places given top protection, according to campaigners.
On average over the past 15 years, Natural England has designated four new sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs) each year. SSSIs are nationally or internationally important places for rare wildlife and habitats, meet strict criteria and are then usually protected from almost all possible development.
But in the past three financial years up to and including 2023-24, Natural England has designated just two new sites.
Wildlife campaigners say that Middlewick Ranges, a former Ministry of Defence firing range earmarked for 1,000 new homes despite being the second-best site in the country for rare nightingales, is one of a number of threatened, wildlife-rich places that should have been made an SSSI in recent years.
According to ecologists, the site on the southern fringe of Colchester meets or exceeds the scientific criteria for an SSSI in six categories: for its endangered nightingales, rare barbastelle bats, range of invertebrates, rare acid grassland, waxcap fungi and veteran trees. Listing it as an SSSI would protect it from development, but in the current political climate might add to accusations that wildlife regulators are blocking development.
The site may now be saved because Colchester city council has recommended removing it from its local plan for the allocation of new housing.
Miles King, of the People Need Nature charity, said: “It’s rather ironic that it should be a council that is highlighting the importance of this site rather than Natural England.”
According to King, Natural England has been cowed by recent Conservative government budget cuts and threats to abolish it, and now by the anti-nature rhetoric of Labour.
He said: “The most important job Natural England have as a regulatory body is notifying SSSIs. We know it makes a huge difference to the survivability of the habitats in the future.”
He called on Natural England to designate Middlewick and other nature-rich places as SSSIs as soon as possible, “if nothing else to show that they exist and they are performing their regulatory function. Unfortunately ‘regulation’ is a dirty word now”.
Sources close to the council’s decision on Middlewick say that Natural England experts played a crucial role in assembling evidence that convinced councillors of the site’s national importance for nature.
The rate of Natural England’s SSSI creation has slowed in recent years after highs of 10 new SSSIs in 2011-12, eight in 2018-19 and six in 2020-21.
Jamie Robins, programmes manager of Buglife, drew up a scientific case for the SSSI designation of Middlewick and the Swanscombe peninsula in Kent, which was made an SSSI in 2021. Its listing helped halt plans for a theme park on the Thames estuary site.
Robins said Natural England’s designation of sites listed in their “designation pipeline” was “painfully slow”.
“Natural England seem to have ground to a halt with SSSI notification across the country in recent years, largely because an underfunded organisation barely has the capacity to even monitor and review the status of their SSSIs, as has been well documented. Every new SSSI they notify creates a bigger workload,” he said.
According to analysis of Natural England data by Miles King, from 2016 to 2019, when Tony Juniper became chair, the average time it took to designate 12 SSSIs after they had been proposed was 0.92 years. In the six years from April 2019 to Feb 2025, the average time from proposal to confirmation for 11 new sites was 2.7 years. A further 13 sites proposed since April 2019 have not yet been confirmed as SSSIs.
John Holmes, strategy director for Natural England, said: “We base every SSSI designations decision on robust evidence, underpinned by scientific advice, and, as such, assessments can run over several years. However, the scale of our current SSSI programme has remained consistent over the last decade.”
According to Natural England, the Covid-19 pandemic significantly affected the designation process, stopping evidence-gathering. In several complex cases, delays were exacerbated by evidence becoming outdated, requiring resurveying. The most recent SSSI designation, West Penwith Moors and Downs in Cornwall, was the biggest designation for seven years and was the focus of the organisation’s efforts in 2022 and 2023.
In 2024, Natural England’s resources were taken up successfully defending a legal challenge to the designation, which was controversial among some local farmers.
There is a list of 22 proposed new SSSIs under consideration, including Flamborough Head in East Yorkshire, Prees Heath in Shropshire and Savernake bat tunnel in Wiltshire, but not featuring Middlewick Ranges. Natural England is not committed to designating all proposed sites.
Some potential designations are contentious, such as Wensum Woods in Norfolk, which stands in the way of the favoured route for the controversial and recently mothballed Western Link road. Norfolk county council last month withdrew its planning application for the road, citing intervention from Natural England. The government watchdog provided the council with new evidence of the national importance of barbastelle bat populations in the area after bat surveys by local ecologists and charities.
Norfolk county council is now lobbying the Department for Transport to restart the road-building project, but if Wensum Woods were designated as an SSSI it would compel planners to find an alternative route.
A Defra spokesperson said: “Protecting the natural environment is at the heart of our vision for making space for rare habitats and threatened species to thrive. That’s why we are investing £400m to plant millions of trees and restore peatlands and have wasted no time in establishing a rapid review of our plan to achieve our legally binding targets for the environment, including measures to improve the condition of protected sites.”
Article by:Source: Patrick Barkham
