Last year we published an updated biodiversity policy committing us to:
- Complying with biodiversity legislation
- Integrating biodiversity into our business procedures and operations
- Protecting biodiversity and enhancing it where possible on all land we own
- Communicating best practice in biodiversity
- Working with external partners and stakeholders
Over the last year, we’ve made good progress against these commitments. We have communicated the policy, produced a supporting strategy, developed a website for our people to use as a resource, included biodiversity requirements in key business procedural documentation and engaged with external stakeholders on biodiversity.
We continue to work to protect and enhance biodiversity on our catchment land and during our capital investment projects as well as supporting the biodiversity aims of Welsh Water through our operational contract.
We have also started a project to trial the active management of biodiversity on our operational sites.
We continued to improve the condition of sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs) on our land. We have nearly 17,500 hectares of SSSIs, some of which are also designated as Special Protection Areas (SPAs) and Special Areas of Conservation (SACs). Over the last year we increased the proportion of SSSIs that are in favourable or unfavourable recovering status to 93% from 83% in 2007/08. Much of this improvement was delivered through the SCaMP project.
We also help to protect specifically designated wildlife areas through investment projects designed to reduce the impact of our operations. During the current 5-year investment period, we have a number of projects relating to our raw water abstractions and wastewater treatment to improve Habitats Directive sites, SSSIs and biodiversity action plan habitats.
This year we have supported the UK Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) reporting process by inputting details of the habitat restoration work undertaken through our sustainable catchment management programme and our woodland habitat BAP work into the Biodiversity Action Reporting System (BARS). BARS is the UK’s web-based information system to support the planning, monitoring and reporting requirements of national and local Biodiversity Action Plans (BAPs), helping to track achievement of national and regional biodiversity targets. Our actions such as the planting of trees and hedgerows, moorland grip blocking, spreading of lime, heather seed and fertilizer are recorded on BARS against specific habitats in the categories of expansion, maintaining extent, restoration or achieving condition. Each has a goal and achievement to date for the area or length.