During the past year we’ve been piloting a new approach to managing biodiversity at six operational sites in our water business, including two water treatment works, an impounding reservoir, one active and one inactive wastewater treatment works and our Warrington headquarters site. We want to find a way to integrate biodiversity considerations into the short and long-term management of sites. This will help us to deliver our biodiversity policy commitments and our duty as a public authority under the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act.
This year we surveyed all the sites, assessing their current biodiversity status and the potential to protect and/or improve the biodiversity value using a new measurement technique developed by our ecology team. The tool, which takes into account priority biodiversity action plan species and protected species and habitats, will allow us to re-assess the improvements made to biodiversity in the future.
We worked with the people responsible for the day to day running of sites, and their long term development, to produce action plans to protect and enhance the biodiversity of the sites. Implementation of the plans is under way, with actions including:
- The simple alteration of the grass mowing regime
- Work to control invasive species
- Clearing of trees in an area of rare plants
- Restoration of habitat suitable for breeding waders
- Establishment of wild flower areas
- Scrub clearance
- Actions to support species such as great crested newts.
Over the next year, we’ll be looking at ways to integrate biodiversity management further into site operation and planning, and assessing the value delivered. We’d like to roll the approach out across more sites, and have included a project to do so in our Final Business plan proposal that would start in 2010.