 So, good afternoon everybody and welcome along to our webinar number five of Great Cambridge Local Plan. I know there's lots of you still arriving, so I'll just talk a little bit more, people are still joining the session. So this is number five in a series of webinars that we've been hosting for you on the current consultation on our preferred options or first proposals for Great Cambridge Local Plan. They've all been around a number of different themes and today's theme is all around biodiversity and green spaces and we've already had climate change, jobs and homes, our strategy and we've had one on how to get involved with the consultation as well. They are all up online on our website already and the slides as well from those previous webinars so those of you who have missed particular sessions that you're interested in you can go to them and I'll give you some details at the end of how you can access them. So today's session is an hour long and what we'll do is we'll have a couple of presentations we've got a really good panel for you this morning, this afternoon should I say, of people who have been involved in A making the plan and also being involved in some of the specific areas around biodiversity and green spaces. So we'll have a couple of presentations, we have got a little bit of interactivity for you as well during the middle for you to get involved as well and there will be a Q&A function which is open to you all all the way throughout the session. So if you put questions in right from kind of the word go and some of the panel will not be able to answer those during the session but we will have up 15 minutes at the end as well to have a panel discussion for any remaining questions and you can ask questions in the Q&A either anonymous or leave the names and the sessions being recorded as I said we will we're recording the session so we can put it up on the website afterwards. So what I'm going to do now quickly is I'm going to stop my screen share and I'm going to go around the panel and get them to introduce themselves this morning so I'm going to go around my screen to the left and I'm going to go to Diana first. Diana Manson from Land Use Consultants and we were involved in pulling together the evidence on green infrastructure to support the plan. Thank you Diana, it's nice to have you here today and welcome Bruce. Good afternoon Bruce Waller, Principal Planning Policy Officer at the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Service and I look after open spaces and sports. Thanks Bruce, nice to have you and John Cornell. Hello, my name is John Cornell, the National Environment Team Leader for Greater Cambridge Shared Planning and I look after the landscape ecologists, landscape architects, ecologists and tree functions within the planning department. Thanks John, it's lovely to have you here today and John Dixon. Hello John Dixon, Planning Policy Manager. Thanks John and Stuart Morris. Hi I'm Stuart, I'm a Principal Policy Officer in the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Team and I've been leading on the policy site for green infrastructure and biodiversity. Good afternoon Stuart and thanks for coming along as well and in the background we've got Will Smith and then Tim Cliff who are helping run the technology and run all the logistics for today. So hopefully everything will go smoothly, they've done a super job so far. But you know, the mercy of technology. My name is Paul Frohner, for those of you who don't know me, I'm Assistant Director for Strategy and Economy. So part of the team that's putting the plan together for Greater Cambridge and what I'm going to do now is I'm going to probably move straight over quickly just before I do. Just a little bit of an outline of today's session for you. So you guys can just get a feel for what it's going to be about. So we're going to talk a little bit about policy context and the green infrastructure evidence and have a little interactive session. Once that's done, then talk about biodiversity net gain and finish up on open space and recreation. And we'll have a little interactive session at the end as well. And as I said, please do post questions into the chat and those that we can answer during the session, we will answer them as we go along. And so without further ado, I'm going to hand over, I think to John, is that correct? You did the first part of the session. So we'll go to John. I think that's what we agreed. That was yesterday, though, wasn't it? OK, so good morning, good afternoon, everybody. As I've already said, my name is John Cornell. I look after the natural environment team here at Greater Cambridge Shared Planning. And so I suppose when it comes to biodiversity and planning, my team are pretty much at the forefront of ensuring that, you know, what's what's planned is delivered when it comes to biodiversity, when it comes to quality landscaping and things like important trees and important areas for for biodiversity in our patch. We work together with colleagues from other organisations very closely from the city of Cambridge, because Greater Cambridge is, as you know, sort of conglomerate of the district of South Cams and Cambridge City, but we do have split functions within planning. So we work very closely with our colleagues at the city of Cambridge to ensure they're all pulling in the same direction. But beyond that, we work with other organisations, as you can see from the slide that's been put up. We work with organisations such as Natural England. We work with the RSPB. We work with the Wildlife Trust. We also work with local charities such as Cambridge Past, Present and Future. And the reason that we do that, of course, is to ensure that we are all pulling in the same direction or singing from the same hymn sheet, as it were, and that we're not going off. We're not going off on a tangent on some kind of biodiversity crusade without first checking that actually we're going in the right direction and it's a strategic move. So the work that we're doing here today and that we've been doing up to this point supports things like the doubling nature strategy that South Cams District Council bought out in February this year. It also supports things like the supplementary planning document that my team has been working on very hard to get through to adoption. We're looking at that in early next year. And that document sounds like quite a bit of jargon, but supplementary planning document essentially is a guidance document for applicants, for folks to look at and see where is the guidance around biodiversity in green spaces? Have we got it right? What are we doing? Are we on the right track? So that should be coming to you guys early next year. And we're doing all of this work essentially to ensure that this first proposal's conversation is appropriate for residents that it's it's containing the right elements that you guys need to understand what we're doing, how we're doing it and why we're doing it. And it's it's key that you engage with us in this first proposals process so that we do have the feedback you can tell us what you like, you can tell us what you don't like and we can test and we can measure if we're on what we think are the right tracks because it is a very complicated business. We've got emerging legislation in the form of the Environment Acts, which is just recently published. We've got existing legislation in the form of older policies, which are relevant. Of course, we've got emerging local plan process, which we hope will deliver more robust policies for biodiversity and green infrastructure. So it's it's a tricky balancing act and it's only really with the outreach and input from residents that we're going to get that right. And that's what we're here to do today. So the goal, the goal, the aim, the aim of this is to ensure that we increase and network of habitats, wildlife and green spaces for people and that we ensure that development really essentially leaves the natural environment in a measurably better place than it was prior to any development taking place. That's the overarching goal. And I'll speak to that a little bit later when we talk about biodiversity net gain. I've probably said enough for the time being as an introduction. So I'll now hand you over to the team that we've been working with at LUC to talk you through the evidence base that they've collected to help us get to the point that we have now. So, as I mentioned, I'm from LUC and we were commissioned in early 2020 to provide an evidence base on the quantity and quality of the existing GI assets in Greater Cambridge and through analysis and consultation to identify deliverable interventions to enhance and expand the network. And the study was supported by a comprehensive stakeholder engagement program, which began right at the start of lockdown. And but we asked a wide range of consult stakeholders in the in the first instance to to help us look at maps like the one you're looking at now and let us know where the baseline of existing assets wasn't quite right and where we needed to be making changes from a data perspective, just to make sure that we had the right baseline map to start with. And next slide, please. So this slide aims to sum up what was quite a sort of involved method. And overall, the study was undertaken in three stages. So the first stage focused on a policy review, mapping the network, as I just mentioned, and undertaking a comprehensive review of existing and emerging evidence relating to the various functions of GI. And there was a lot of incoming information and a lot of emerging documents and studies. So we organized information into effectively seven green infrastructure themes, which broadly reflect the ecosystem services that GI provides. So you'll see the little icons at the bottom. Those themes were landscape, cultural heritage and sense of place, biodiversity and geo diversity, the water environment, access and connectivity, recreation and play, carbon sequestration and then agriculture and community food growing. So whilst we had those seven themes running across all of those themes, we also looked at climate change, well-being and social inclusion and other environmental quality factors. And we engaged with a large number of stakeholders throughout the early stages and towards the end. And we had discussions, we had technical workshops, emails and surveys to better understand the issues and opportunities as well as what existing GI initiatives were underway. We found there was quite a lot happening and we were also able to liaise with the authors of other emerging evidence bases. So the water study, carbon study, landscape studies. There was really a wealth of information to inform our more integrated GI study. So in the second stage, we looked at all those GI assets and we looked at them individually, but then we also looked at them collectively and we developed a series of theme based maps to help us understand how the network is functioning. And we gave specific consideration to things like the vulnerability of designated sites, to recreational pressure, predicted population change, condition of lowland peak resource and other issues that were brought to our attention through stakeholder engagement. And through all of this, we developed a long list of GI opportunities and where possible, we tried to map them as a series of broad zones. So then these were all overlaid to identify areas of search, which you can see on that rather brightly coloured map. And this is where we started to realise GI interventions could deliver multiple ecosystem services and should be the focus of our attention. So in the third stage, moving to the right of the graphic you can see, we'd had a pause between stages two and three. So we took time again to review emerging evidence and most notably around nature strategies being developed by the councils and the Cambridge Nature Network, the call for greensides and also updated evidence on recreational pressure. And then in that final stage, we brought all of this evidence together. And so looking back at the areas of search that we'd identified, we identified 14 strategic GI initiatives. I'll run through a couple of these examples shortly. Broadly speaking, and these initiatives provide a framework for more specific delivery projects that were identified through the study. And another important output of the study right in the bottom corner. There was a series of policy recommendations and also some non-policy specific recommendations focusing more on the advocacy of GI within the area. Could I have the next slide, please? And so this map sums up those 14 strategic GI initiatives. It's a little bit fuzzy, but of these, you can see nine are spatially specific and shown on the map and five are what we call dispersed initiatives. So these are more relevant to a range of locations rather than being spatially focused in one area. So collectively, the initiatives have a range of objectives from revitalizing the chalk stream network to enhancement of the fence, supporting the expansion of urban tree canopy and tackling things like deficiencies in access to recreation space, amongst other things. And there's a lot of detail in the final report on each of these initiatives. But just to give you a flavor, I thought I'd focus in on two of them. So initiative number one is focusing on revitalizing the chalk stream network. And this initiative aims to conserve and restore this internationally rare chalk and internationally rare chalk streams also to increase their ecological value and alongside that, to protect the East Angling and chalk groundwater resource. And this initiative as a framework builds on going ongoing initiatives as part of the Greater Cambridge Chalk Streams project led by the Council, the City Council, Cambridge Water Company, Wildlife Trust and also the Wild Trap Trust. It knits in with other recommendations from the integrated water management strategy and the water resources East Natural Capital Plan. So it really provides that framework for all of this ongoing work. Taking another example, just north of Cambridge, we've got strategic initiative six, which is named the North Cambridge Greenspace. This was developed to provide new strategic green spaces to the north of Cambridge. This is to address the deficit in accessible GI in this area, but also to reduce recreational pressure on existing sites. And those were issues that were raised by stakeholders numerous times. So it's a well positioned to meet the demand from proposed development and to provide a connection between Cambridge City and News Valley. And we developed this initiative and alongside the local nature partnership and other stakeholders. And it knits together elements of the Cambridge Nature Network a site suggested through the call for green sites and other emerging projects. And next slide, please. So as I mentioned, each of these 14 initiatives has a really detailed write up in the report. And each one covers sort of a structured approach. So we looked at the overall ambitions and objectives of the initiative and it sets out what gene, what GI themes the initiative supports. It's got a supporting map and overview description. It then goes on to detail the relationship with existing projects and initiatives. And that's where if a call for green site was in the area and looked like it could contribute to the overall objective, we would have listed these. And we also noted the relationship with the development strategy, potential delivery partners, potential delivery mechanisms and funding streams. And we had a go at estimating the time scales and addictive costs and also the level of priority. And each one is supported by either a case study from somewhere else in the country or a spotlight on a project that's being led or run in the area already. And next slide. And just thinking back over the most important messages that came out of all of this work. And I think it's really worth reiterating that stakeholders remain so engaged the whole way through the study and everybody that we spoke to demonstrated willingness to contribute to the doubling nature vision. And we also found so many ongoing delivery projects. So what we tried to do was knit them together to achieve the overall strategic initiative objectives. So now there's a framework to bring all of these different work streams together. And it's worth saying that the resulting initiatives have a really close spatial relationship with the Cambridge Nature Network and Natural Cambridges Nature Recovery Areas. So again, going back to what John was saying, everything's growing in the same direction. And by embedding these initiatives in the local plan, there's also a name to use development to contribute towards these initiatives. And also came out really clearly that these initiatives can't be delivered by one body or organization. It's going to take a lot of continual dialogue between neighbouring authorities and other organisations who've got an interest in GI to get these delivered. And what came out clearly as well as partnership working is going to be absolutely crucial to delivering on the vision. It's not easy. No one's saying it's easy. That's probably the beginning. And it's going to take a lot of commitment and monitoring to see these realised. Thank you very much. Just a really, really interesting start to the session and see if any questions coming through already. So next up, just going to get you start to get you involved a little bit in getting your brains thinking about some of this stuff as well. So we're going to run a couple of quick interactive sessions and ask you a couple of questions. And those of you who have used this or been on previous ones, previous seed webinars, you'll know how to do this already. And we're using something called Menti today so you can either scan that QR code with your phone and it will take you to the correct page or you can put in that go to www.menti.com and then stick in that code and it should come up with the questions that we're about to ask you. So what I'll do is if you have any trouble then do let me know stick in the Q&A and we'll try and get it sorted. We haven't had any issues so far and hopefully it will stimulate some views. So we'll just move on. So okay, so what we, so we've got your opinions really. So what do you think I think are the most important issues to address for our green infrastructure network? And you've heard some of those being mentioned by Diana and also a very clear fact that actually this stuff is to be delivered by multiple people, multiple partners, multiple organizations. And actually it's incumbent on us all I suppose to understand how we can make those connections. So, but I think we're interested in obviously this coming through our consultation and I think in one of the questions you've already seen that Stuart's answered, please go and put your detailed comments in. But actually what we're trying to do in this session is get stimulate some views and stimulate our own thoughts and how we continue to kind of draft the plan. So what do you think we get some coming through now? So hopefully you can add, I think there's no word count in this so you can add whatever you like. Please no swearing or anything rude. That would be great. I think I've got swearing that switched off on this anyway. So avoid being all things to everyone everywhere. And I think that's a very good comment because this is a land use plan for a wide area. It's a greater Cambridge plan. So we have to look at that whole area and the strategy session that we outlined, maybe I think it must have been two weeks ago, shows you the nature of the size of the area that we're planning for and where both development and sort of the best place is to put things to green infrastructure whether it be enhanced green infrastructure or enhanced connectivity. And I'm gonna invite some of the panel to jump in on some of these as we go through and if there's anything that sticks out. I mean, well, Link, we talked about connectivity there. John Cornell, I think this is really your area as well. I mean, is there anything to add into that in terms of the connectivity of some of this green networks should we call them? Well, I'm only to say that, I mean, it's just good practice to link habitats with corridors. I mean, that's from an ecological perspective, that's a sort of a 101 goal. It's what you wanna be doing. Otherwise you end up with isolated pockets of bits and pieces that don't really do much. If we can link those habitats and the biodiversity with green infrastructure, that also serves a multifunctional purpose of getting people from A2B on bicycles or electric scooters or whatever we're promoting, that's maybe a win-win. No, I'd agree with that, John. And I think that one of the things that's a real intrinsic link is obviously, we are doing planning, which is there's links with every part of it, but the access to both open spaces and green spaces and nature for people and how that links in with our current 18 months that we've just had, we've all been locked up in our houses for a long time. I think the real value has come through on people's being able to access green spaces and green networks and its connectivity for nature, but also connectivity for us. I mean, there's some comments in there around certainly around developments being located close to green spaces. We've got a session tomorrow, midday. It's our last webinar actually. It's a focus session on Northeast Cambridge, which is one of our areas of development in the plan. It's got an AAP aside in. There's quite a big focus on open spaces in that and then coming forward. Not to overlook the environment close to home as well as nature is important everywhere and absolutely. And obviously the area that we're planning for is diverse. We're a city region with some very rural hinterlands, agricultural land as well. So there's a role, there's all these different mosaics of kind of areas that are really important to try and connect. And then we hope that we've started to really think about this in a comprehensive way. Stuart, is there anything you wanted to say because you've done quite a lot of work on this? Yeah, it's definitely something we're still working on. I think, as you say, it's a key point is that our area is quite different. Different parts of Greater Cambridge have different challenges and opportunities. Existing development and its access to nature is one thing. Maybe it's one thing that's maybe hard to sometimes improve that very local access to nature if you're working with what's already there. Larger scale, new development opportunity provides greater opportunities to identify and design the development around that close access to nature. But it's something we've very much got in mind. There are national access to natural green space standards and those are looking to be reviewed. So it's something we're working on for the next stage, really. Yeah, and it's interesting to see some other parts coming through around empowering communities and talking to the point that Dynamite around how everybody needs to get involved. Just one of the other things before we move on to the other one. And we are taking all these comments on board as well. So these will be captured in our consultation plan in terms of where we capture your comments. But as you have some good stuff coming through, please get this into the consultation as well, it's really important you didn't participate in that. Is it an interesting one there on the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission? So I think the last of our GI initiatives, Dana, is on environmentally sustainable farming and recognising that that's pretty much entirely outside of planning as such because it doesn't involve development. But it's key to recognise that, again, we need to work with everybody to make this stuff happen on a range of scales and in different situations throughout our area. So it's definitely a very important one. It strikes me some of the comments are raising a lot of issues about how developments are designed as well. So there's a lot of overlap here with our Great Places theme. So we've tried in the consultation documents to set out what we think good developments here would actually look like, what features would it need to include? What characteristics would it need to address? And I think we've picked up points about the connectivity and the greening of space and so on in those policies. But you might want to provide some of this feedback on those policies as well. How should we design places to perhaps link to that wider green infrastructure network? So it's part of the whole area, not just a separate element, I guess. Yeah, thanks. What I'm going to do, I'm going to let you talk. Sorry, go on, Diana, talk. I'm just going to move to the next slide so people can get a view of the question while we're talking because it's totally related. So, Diana, sorry. Please go ahead and so use it. I was just going to say that's part of the recommendations from the report, really focus on landscape-led master plans and ensuring that that's the first consideration. Yeah, absolutely. And this is the second question. And John Cornell, and I've got two Johns for me today, is going to talk a little bit about biodiversity net gain in the next section. But before we do that, I think it's really useful and there's some obviously, it's very clear about the links between biodiversity and green infrastructure and green spaces. But I think what we'd like to get you thinking about now is what you think are the most important issues to address in improving biodiversity. I mean, there's a comment in the last section that people are very concerned about, not just habitat loss, but loss of species. And I think we're all very concerned here about those things too. And I think it'd be good to get your views on what you think about that before we go in. And John's going to give you a bit of detail around some of the issues that we're looking at in terms of biodiversity net gain, but some of the kind of moving changes with just, you know, John mentioned at the beginning around the environmental bill, there has been a lot of movement in this area. I mean, you know, prior to my work that I do now, looking after this piece of work, I've come from an environmental background and this is, you know, I remember talking about this stuff maybe 10, 15 years ago when there was very little movement in that space. And it does seem to have gathered traction. Yes, there's a lot of kind of, you know, global international, you know, issues and challenges that we're facing right now that have maybe catalyzed that. But I do think that, you know, that the things have moved quickly and are rightly so. So, you know, what are the things that you think about that? And reduction in the abstraction. I mean, the water issues are absolutely something we're critically aware of. And, you know, we did a whole session last week on climate change and gave, you know, gave a lot of weight to it, trying to explain some of the ways we've approached looking at the water issues. And it's definitely, you know, it's a definite, it's a definite high priority in this plan to ensure that we're, you know, we're doing what we're doing in a sustainable manner and, you know, improving using development or using growth in current economic mechanisms we have to deliver to improve, to provide resilience to, you know, what may have not been improved in the past. So that's definitely one of our high priorities. And climate change, you know, I don't think you can decouple biodiversity, green infrastructure, climate change, arguably, you know, wellbeing, you know, they're very, very, they're very, very closely and intrinsically linked as, you know, concepts really. We don't know, you know, alongside sort of the fact that we actually try to plan to deliver net zero. We also are aware that climate change is actually happening. So we have to also prepare for that to happen. And our green spaces and our biodiversity has a key role in helping mitigate some of the impact that we're already seeing right now. And of climate change, you know, some of the extreme weather that we're all starting to see will continue to see over time. Anything on there that's ticking out on any of these for you guys on the panel? And there's some questions around BNG. And I'm sure John will be happy to get involved in those in a little minute, because he's right at the sharp end of that with his team in terms of, you know, not just the policy work that we're doing, but also at the development management side of things in terms of assessing that and how we ensure that BNG is included. The thing is, there's a lot of people moving, isn't it? But there's ones about expanding areas for public access so that it doesn't degrade habitats. I think that's really important. And there's just fundamentally there's a balance of stuff for people and stuff for wildlife. And I think that hopefully the strategic initiatives that Diana and colleagues have put together and that we're putting forward provide that balance so that some of them are very specifically to meet the needs of wildlife and to expand the area around those protected sites so that there's less pressure on those sites. And then some of them, such as that North Cambridge green space, are very particularly to provide space for people so that they're not going to, so that we as people don't go over somewhere else and trample all over the wildlife sites. So it's definitely a critical issue. You tell us whether you think we've got that balance right, but we've very much had that in mind. Yeah. There's an interesting one there about peatland, which again overlaps with our climate change evidence. Indeed, that picked up on that particular issue about protecting important carbon sinks when you're planning for future development. So again, another evidence-based link with the climate change evidence, which is also in the document widely. Worth saying, although we looked at sort of broad areas of search, did look for areas of sort of multiple benefits and looking where you've got multiple ecosystem services, sometimes you do just need to focus on the one sort of priority. And sometimes that is sort of biodiversity and the keeping people away, but then sort of alternatively providing them with something else. Yeah. The one that's really sticking in my mind is around urban species as well, because we're doing sessions today on green infrastructure and biodiversity. Of course, biodiversity doesn't just exist in green spaces. And actually, a really important thing in questioning around there are, we have got some small green belt release proposed in the strategy, but there is always a lot of sensitivity around green belt. But the you also must remember that actually ground-field land has huge opportunities for biodiversity as well. And actually, it's really important to consider this stuff in the realm. What are we talking about achieving in terms of impact? Are we talking about numbers and quantity or are we talking about actually quality of space for different things and quality of space for biodiversity? So I think these are all really important things. I'm going to move on because I'm aware that we're running through time. We've got really good little next step from John as well. Some questions coming in here soon. Thank you for your input. I hope that was useful. We'll have a little one at the end as well. So what I'm going to do is move on to John. Thanks, Paul. Okay, so I'm going to talk a little bit about biodiversity net gain now. And of course, we don't want to blind you with gobbledygook. It's all too easy to do when you're talking about these sorts of things, but also we don't want to leave you sort of guessing either. So I've tried to capture some information on these slides and talk you through them in a way that sets out in a clear way what we're trying to do and where that's coming from. So if you could just pass on to the next slide, please, Paul. So biodiversity net gain, as I'm sure many of you are aware, is an approach that aims to leave biodiversity in a measurably better condition than before the development took place. That's assuming that the development does take place, of course. It's a compensation approach to offsetting from loss of biodiversity from development. And it's an improvement. Some folk still have questions about biodiversity net gain. We'll get to those a little bit later, but it is a huge improvement and it's staying with a particular trajectory around enhancing biodiversity and protecting it. The old system, if you wind back the clock a few years, talked about something called no net loss. The no net loss was what it said on the tin that when you develop some land, when you build something, that there's no net loss to the biodiversity that was there. And it didn't really work, to be honest. There usually was net loss, people fudged figures and developers. We don't need to go into too much detail about that, but it wasn't really a very robust mechanism. And so we then had come forward, this thing called biodiversity net gain, where instead of just saying, we're not gonna lose any biodiversity, the approach therefore is now, we're going to actually increase the biodiversity as a result of the development. Now for the last, well, the last few years, certainly going back to 2012, National Planning Policy Framework Document, talked about measurable net gain. But unfortunately, the good folk that put that together didn't talk about how much net gain. And so measurable, well, that can be 1%, can't it? It can be 10%, it can be whatever you want it to be. And so that wasn't, while it was helpful, it wasn't really as helpful as it could, should have been. That's now been fixed, thankfully, by the Environment Bill, now the Environment Act, which was passed and got Royal Assent last Tuesday, possibly the Tuesday before November the 9th. And within the Environment Act, it now says quite clearly, thou shalt require developers to deliver a minimum, okay, a minimum of 10% biodiversity net gain as a result of their development scheme. Okay, so I think we've got a very solid base there from which we can move. And just so you know, other local authorities around England have been doing this for some time in there through their local plan process. Because obviously everybody's on a slightly different time scale in terms of where they are in that local plan process. So we're hitting this just about right because we're developing now a new local plan policies. And one of the things in the new local plan we're aiming for is a 20% minimum biodiversity net gain from development. Now again, we're in the early stages of this conversation. Is it practical? Some will say no. Some will say yes, it absolutely is. Some will tell us it's not enough. So of course, you know, we've got a very mixed bag of opinions and we have to go on the science. We have to go on what the best practice around the country is telling us what works and what doesn't. But I think you can see from this that there's a clear trajectory from a system that didn't really use the deliver for biodiversity. But clearly the intention is that we really wanna see those net gains on the ground making a difference. Next slide please. So why is it required? Okay, well, how long have you got? There's a number of reasons probably as long as your arm. So, you know, this is not everything but there is just a few that I thought of. Biodiversity historically at development sites not everywhere, not everywhere by any means but historically, much like quality landscaping it's been a bit of an afterthought. It's been a bit of a tick box approach. It's been a bit of a, you know, shove it over there in the corner and job done. And so what we've ended up with is really not much of a legacy in terms of biodiversity from previous developments. There are some exceptions here in Campbell but by chance more than design we've got fantastic green spaces managed by the Wildlife Trust which are good for wellbeing, good for walks at lunchtime but they're also good for the biodiversity here. So it does happen but it was, as I said, here in Camborn rather, I think it was rather by design it was more of an accident that we've ended up with what we have. There's also a huge body of shifting public sentiment towards this partly because of COVID. People have found that they like their local park. They don't want it built on. Yeah, they like hearing the birds. So there was a huge body just locally but globally of shifting public sentiment towards nature and biodiversity being something of value, you know, not a nice to have but a must have. And that's also influencing opinions within local and national governments. We need to reverse the biodiversity loss which accelerated in the mid 20th century after the last war really quite a lot. And since then, we've not really done well for biodiversity in this country. It's just gone down and down and down. Development's played a big part of that. So we'd like to reverse that. It's not just about protecting what we have it's about enhancing and growing that network. And again, I've mentioned links to health and wellbeing, who doesn't like a nice walk in the countryside close to where you live with quality green spaces rather than sort of dysfunctional parks with the Coke cans and the blowing debris. We don't want that, do we? So this all links together and hopefully we can join it up. Next slide please, Paul. So how does it work? Briefly, conscious of time. Well, one thing biodiversity doesn't do biodiversity net gain doesn't do doesn't change legal protections from important biodiversity. That stays unchanged really. All existing habitats and their condition on a site. So I want to propose development site before any spades go in the ground. We need to capture what the base conditions are for the biodiversity on that site. We need to measure the habitats. We need to measure what's there. And actually, again in the Environment Act developers are going to have to come forward with something called a biodiversity net gain plan. And that net gain plan will have to demonstrate that they have correctly measured the existing conditions on the site. What's there, they can't fudge it. It's got to be approved by local members with the local planning authority. And so that again, that's a new process that's come forward in the Environment Act. So we're sure when the development takes place we're certain of what's there before it happens and therefore we can measure net gains accurately out the back end of that. Developments must not only protect but enhance and create new habitats. And again, this is similar language. It's about enhancing. It's not just about, you know we're not going to lose that wood over there. What we're going to hopefully move towards is a situation where from development existing biodiversity is enhanced. So we can add to it. We can add to our strategic networks. We can add corridors. We can look at brownfield sites and we can hopefully get it right with the help of the partners like Wildlife Trust, like CPPF, like RSPB, Natural England all of those folks I mentioned earlier because it's a joint effort. That isn't to say, I must just add we will always agree. Much like any debate, any conversation you will have folk on different edges of the spectrum. Some wanting to pull us all the way this way and others wanting to pull us all the way that way. And I think, you know if we're going to have a grown up conversation there must be recognition of that. You cannot please everybody all the time. So there will be elements, I'm sure that will be contentious and it will be difficult to resolve but it's through conversation that we hope we can do that. Next slide please Paul. So this is one of the thorny topics that we're not going to get into too much today because it could last the whole afternoon but on-site versus off-site. We're hoping that, as I said a biodiversity net gain plan is required before any development takes place. But what we're going to hope for and what we're going to push for is that development where possible enhances and protects biodiversity on a given site. I can tell you though now looking at the plans that we get in front of us weekly that that's not the way that developers typically thinking in the past. There's going to have to be a characteristic approach but I suspect we're going to struggle to get biodiversity net gain at 10% even at 5% in some places within the red line boundaries of our development sites. Okay now you might like that you might not like that I'm sure some people won't but it's a reality, it's a fact. And therefore we have to have an answer for taking that biodiversity elsewhere and that will be an off-site biodiversity mechanism which will feed into the sorts of strategic locations Diana, LUC was showing us earlier that strategic mapping that we've done and we've done that in partnership as I've said with all of those other organizations. So we've not gone out on the limb and decided we're like a green blob over here it's been done in a joined up coordinated way. And the thing is, is that if we cannot get the biodiversity net gain on-site then we're going to have to take it off-site and the way to do that is to put it in a strategically agreed location that enhances biodiversity for the district for the county for the wider area. As I said, it's going to be contentious but we're going to have to do something. We can't sit on the fence. The alternative is that you get planning developments which don't meet their net gain requirement and then get refused a planning committee. That's not really an option either is it? So it's going to be tricky. As I've said before, our goal is to protect and enhance existing biodiversity first but then go on to enhance more. Off-site biodiversity and enhancement, sorry, enhancement is an option. It's one that I just talked about and there are various options for that coming forward. Natural England will eventually, hopefully sooner or other later have a register of approved sites around the country that we can use to place enhanced biodiversity on and that will be a mechanism that we're still trying to work out. So we haven't fully thought that through. We don't have all the answers around that but it's the direction of travel that we're moving in. Next slide, Paul, please. So that takes us on to B&G and the local plan, my final slide and really just to say that as I've already said, we are looking at 20% biodiversity net gain for all developments in the forthcoming local plan. That's the part of the first conversation. What do you think? We're using evidence as we've already seen from Diana's presentation to identify where to put that B&G. We're going to introduce a mechanism for ensuring in perpetuity. This was one of the questions on the chat. How do we ensure that this stuff's managed and monitored? Well, in perpetuity means 30 years. Don't ask me who thought of that but that's the goal, the gold standard 30 years. In the biodiversity net gain plan, there will need to be a transparent and a costed management plan that sets out how the proposal plans to meet that 30 year commitment. We can't just have things popping up for five minutes and then being dead or plowed up in a few years. That will not happen. It can't happen. It's not, the system's not designed for that sort of short termism. It's more designed for the long term. And of course, as I've already said, all of this is really helping us to support things like the doubling nature strategy and the other council goals, which we have to enhance biodiversity on our patch and hopefully improve wellbeing for everybody and a place to live for our biodiversity. So that's my brief whip through biodiversity net gain. We'll try to answer questions if you have any. And I believe we're going to move on to green spaces now. Thanks. Thank you, John. So my name is Bruce Waller. I look after sports and open spaces and the Greater Cambridge Share Planning Service. I just want to briefly cover the evidence studies we're going to be preparing to help support the review of the local plan for Greater Cambridge. So I'll start off with the Greater Cambridge playing pitch strategy along with the indoor sports facility strategy. We already have these strategies in place which covers the growth in the current local plans for 2031. And we have started to update these, taking into account growth that we've outlined in the first proposals to 2041. These basically follow Sport England's methodology, focusing in playing pitch strategy to do with outdoor cricket, football, hockey and rugby pitches. And the indoor sports facility focuses on indoor sports halls, other indoor sports facilities, including swimming pools. In addition to these two strategies, we're also going to be completing an outdoor courts and rink strategy. This looks at those smaller, yet still useful spaces such as multi-use games areas, outdoor tennis courts, bowling rinks, netball courts. There's a lot around the whole area, some of which perhaps need improving rather than additional facilities. So the idea is, is that we will have a comprehensive portfolio of documents to support our strategy for providing sports and recreation for Greater Cambridge. And the next year, we are planning to update the open space and recreation strategy. If we could have the next slide please. I'm just going to go into this bit more detail because I know it's quite very important for people. So this to clarify focuses on the urban and village open spaces. So it will involve reviewing the current open spaces. At the moment, there's standards for the city and standards for the South Cambridge here. So we're going to be reviewing these standards and given how Cambridge of extensions have started to move into South Cambridge here, in effect, we're thinking that maybe it'll be more appropriate to have an urban and rural standard to reflect their differing urban characteristics. So it'll be exploring this option and looking at perhaps the suitable areas which include an urban standard. So this might be, for example, the urban, the Cambridge itself, including the urban extensions which extend up to the A14 and M11, to the North and West respectively. And as well, including the new towns of Campbell and North Stonewater Beach, which themselves will be more of an urban development as opposed to your traditional rural developments often seen in South Cambridge here. Next slide please. So they will review the quantum quality and access of open spaces, which as I've discussed earlier, is all very important. But I think it's important to highlight how open spaces is going to be quite pivotal in helping to deliver a number of area-wide strategies. For example, helping to mitigate changing climates and helping to reduce urban heat islands in urban areas, helping to provide spaces to support ecological improvements, as well as helping to deal with flooding, such as the provision of sustainable urban drainage schemes. And obviously with the recent past 18 months of how there's been much greater focus on health and wellbeing, both physical and mental, it's important that we take account of how these spaces can deliver on these agendas, as well as encouraging people to actually live active, healthy lifestyles, not just when it's fair weather, but throughout the year, for all ages, all abilities, we're all different people, we all want to do different things at different times, and it's seeing how we can perhaps help deliver on that. So, and I think this really reflects what was made earlier, comments made earlier about the importance of the quality of the open spaces to ensure that they're actually being as functional as possible because they're all limited spaces as a finite resource, and they offer opportunities to really deliver on a wide range of strategies which will improve people's lifestyles. I also want to follow up on green spaces, local green space designations in particular. So, we originally tried to do local green space designations through the local plan process. However, it was quite difficult to actually get sites designated to the inspector, it has some rather high standards, and it was difficult to prove the local significance at a district level. So, we're proposing that in future, local green space designations will be reviewed through the neighborhood plan process. Okay, hopefully that was a succinct review of my slides and information. Over to you, Paul. Thanks, Bruce. Thanks, John. Very helpful, and as I said, the slides will be up afterwards. So, we've got a bit of time now. We have got an interactive session, but we also want to take some questions. We have been answering questions in the chat. There are still some coming through. So, please do start putting your questions in and we can answer them as we go along. We just have a quick interactive session. We've run it whilst you're asking questions as well, and I'll kind of compare both of them at the same time as is. So, have a bit of a think about, you know, in relation to what Bruce has said as well, but also in kind of the wider piece around what's important to you about locations for play spaces in your local area. So, good to see some comments coming through. And whilst we're doing that, I'm going to answer a couple of questions in the chat. So, there's a question on the work of the FPA. So, for those of you who don't know what that is, it's the Future Parks Accelerator, which has been operating in Cambridge and Peterborough for the last year. It's an accelerator program. It's government-led or National Lottery Funded, I think, as well. One of the things that's really complicated about an area like ours, and I'm just talking about great multiple layers of governance, the multiple stakeholders, the multiple landowners of particularly green spaces, parks, open spaces. Each council, and it kind of goes to the question earlier on around, you know, how do we ensure that the who looks after who stewards green spaces going forward? And much of that stuff is actually outside of what we can do in planning policy. But actually, that's why we need to be collaborating on different levels with different organizations about how these things run. You know, certain councils run their own parks and open spaces still, three in-house teams, some of them do it very differently, some are third sector. The way that the FPA is currently working, as my understanding of it goes, is that actually all of the members of all councils within the entire Cambridge and Peterborough area are actually sat on that project board at the moment and are feeding into both funding mechanisms and also kind of stewardship models for the future. And that project will be up and running. And what I'll try and do is I'll get away and I'll put a link up on the site to the FPA project so you can see what it is that's happening there. So some thoughts coming through into the... Can I just answer a quick question from... Sure. I meant to answer earlier when I was talking about B&G and got sidetracked, I'm afraid, but Dick Newell wrote in right at the beginning actually about nest spaces and swift boxes. And I just wanted to reply to Dick that we've been looking at this in the SPD because we want the guidance in that document to be accurate and up to date and fit for purpose. And actually what we've discovered, having had a bit of a look around the country, what's going on elsewhere with bird boxes and bat boxes provision for developments is that there's a British standard now for this. And so we've gone ahead and purchased that. I think it's about 20 quid, it's not much. And we're going to incorporate the guidance in that British standard into the SPD, right at the place, I think, Dick, where you have previously an action for swifts as previously said, you know what? This is a bit lacking. You've got a paraphrasing. You've got to tighten this up. So we're absolutely taking that on, Dick, we're taking your comments on. We're going to get that British standard in the SPD and hopefully that'll help to improve things and clear things up. Thanks, John. That's really helpful. I'm going to answer a few questions here. I think we feel free to add some thoughts into the mentee and we can discuss them as we're working through questions as well. I'm going to go to where do the existing and proposed country parks fit in? Are these considered more nature's places or recreation? And I'm going to pick that up. Stuart, maybe you? I think it probably comes back to that balance again. Obviously, they can do both of that. And it's just important, I think, to make for those people managing those parks to be clear on what's for nature and what's for people such that you don't put too much pressure on what I think probably would say biodiversity being a key point, but then providing that space for people provides an extra benefits so long as it's not impacting negatively on the biodiversity. So I think it is just in each instance, it's just working out what the priorities for that space, but seeking to manage that balance so we can provide the best for both. Yeah, absolutely. And I've got a comment here around how confident can we be that policies seeking to protect and enhance biodiversity will not be undermined by other big issues that still have to be resolved such as water supply, sufficient quality or quantity needed for new development plan. Don't know if John Dixon, you might want to talk to this one actually. So I guess that's really the role of the evidence base and the plan making process we're going through. So as you've seen today and that the other webinars, we're trying to develop a, I think as a comprehensive evidence base exploring what all the sustainability issues around environment, social and economic issues to inform that plan making process to understand that we have a sustainable development strategy and we'll continue to develop that evidence base as we go through the process. And when we reach the end of the process and we submit the plan, the councils wish to adopt, that itself will be subject to the independent examination which will test whether that plan is sound being informed about evidence base and comments received on consultation to those later stages. So there is a lot of work going on to make sure we do have a plan that delivers sustainable development and there's a lot still to do, but I would hope that gives you the answer to that one as we go forward. It might be worth mentioning that, I think I mentioned it earlier, but whilst we were developing the GI evidence, we were lucky enough to be able to have quite open conversations with them, those who were developing the integrated water management strategy. So they were looking through the lens, through those discussions, we could look through their lens, they could look through our lens. So the strategic initiatives, you'll see some of them do actually pick up on points that have come from that strategy as well and thinking about how they can integrate. So hopefully we've picked up the big issues. Yeah, I mean, I'm aware on time, but I'm happy to run over for a few more minutes because I think there's some questions here, it'd be good to answer them now. So I might come back to you, Dianne actually on this one, so it feels like GI ambitions overwhelmingly biodiversity-focused, GI can perform many ecosystem functions, might not be part of the network to form green infrastructure functions, or example, sustainability and drainage in highly urbanised areas. Will other GI functions also be given a considerable way through planning system? For example, through ENG on actual capital, I think ENG, you were talking about environmental net gain, it's probably less worked up as a concept than BNG, but Dianne, do you want to... Yeah, I mean, perhaps some reassurance, we were definitely a multi-disciplinary team, so yes, there were a sort of ecology-focused specialist, but there was also landscape specialist and heritage or sort of historic environment specialist. So I do think through our sort of themed approach, we gave each theme enough attention and then we focused on how those could be woven together. So I don't think it is overwhelmingly biodiversity-focused, I mean, biodiversity is incredibly important, but there are definitely some initiatives which tackle sort of people issues and access and sort of health and wellbeing issues, so I think there's a wide range of objectives. You might find biodiversity weaves through quite a lot of them because we've tried to pull those different strands together. But yeah, definitely the integrated approach is one that I would say we definitely used. Thanks, Dianne. There's another question here about the impact of light on wildlife and as it's tricky as people will know this, why can't we carry lights? And I think it's really important that we understand that there are different views on these things and actually what's appropriate in one place might not be appropriate in the other. I think that there are light issues and specific species certainly from bats and things like that, from my memory of my environmental times. But actually at the same time, what we're also trying to do is make places inclusive for people and there are parks and open spaces where people want to be able to use them or people want to be able to access connectivity during the night or in the evenings and we've got other issues to consider in the round and I think that's why it's important we get balance use across the board with this stuff because what works for somebody doesn't necessarily work for somebody else in that sense. But what I would really encourage you, I know this comment around the session should be longer. I'm sorry we can't do longer sessions in some ways. We would love to do lots of this stuff. We do have a lot of stuff to unpack in this consultation, in this local plan. I make no apologies actually for the level of detail and the number of documents that are involved in putting this together because it is a comprehensive land use plan and a very important piece of work to shape the development and the future of this area and there is a huge amount of what we've tried to do in this in this sense is demystifying some of this and these sessions really are supposed to pick up some of that and highlight you to where you can actually actually get some more information. I think we've picked up most questions anyway. If there are further questions, happy to go through what I'm going to do I'm just going to get rid of my screen over here now. I'm going to spin to do that because we don't need to touch on that. I'm going to start this slide. If you have got any comments, please visit the website. There's ways you can contact us on May if you've got questions but you can get involved through these consultations. You can pick up a survey. There's a really short anonymous survey which we've put in place because not all people like to give their names out and I know there's been some noise around that but actually it's important that we try and get as many users as possible so we need to try and open it up. So there's a short survey you can get involved in where you can go into your name and address details and have some really detailed comments on the policies, the proposals, the strategy, all of these sort of things that we've talked about today. I'm always happy to help. My team always have to help signpost to people with big fill like their things that they can't access or don't understand. It is quite difficult in some ways to explain some of this stuff because it's quite complicated. Not all of us know everything about any of this stuff to be honest with you. It's very special. So I'm just going to pick up a couple of questions before. One last question I think we've got on there before we go. I'm really concerned the offsite BNG option may be a cop out for land-based developers. I'm probably sure that a few of my team might feel like that as well. On-site and possibly near-site options that can bind a place for displaced wildlife to move into must surely be priorities. John Cornel probably best place to answer this question. I knew I wasn't going to get away so easily. Of course it is an emerging theme now that as offsite BNG is being worked up as a concept there are lots of people standing and saying that's not good enough. It's a cop out. It's about placing the appropriate habitat in the appropriate locations for the appropriate species. So it's not going to be a sort of a willy-nilly you can't make your BNG work on site. Let's just drive up the road 10 miles and stick it in a field. It's not going to be like that at all. We wouldn't get away with that. But as I said earlier, there are very real challenges when you have development going on some sites to get any kind of net gain for biodiversity within the red-line boundary. Now what we've seen in other parts of the country where this has happened is the shift in how things work has actually begun to affect land prices. Would you believe? Kill horror in a place like Cambridge, greater Cambridge. Can you imagine what kind of seismic shift that would mean? So we don't have any answers. We're conscious that it's not ideal to take BNG offsite but there will be, as I've said before, instances where there is no other option. We're going to have to work with developers and applicants to ensure that they prioritise, maybe this is something that we can bake into the local plan that's not in the Environment Act, that they prioritise on site first, and then any that's left over possibly can go towards a more strategic site that will benefit habitat and species elsewhere. But it's the thorny issue and it's not something we're going to duck out of. We're going to try and get it right working with everybody to move that in the right direction. Thanks, John. Alongside a thousand other thorny issues as well. It's absolutely right that this is a start of a journey with some of this stuff in many aspects. Now it's become enshrined. I think the first point of the point is ensuring that we've got strong policy frameworks to be able to enforce and leave. I'm going to just quickly say there is a question here around the Water Treatment Works Plant location. I'm not ignoring the question. And we know that this is a really sensitive issue and we've discussed it in pretty much all of the sessions so far that's been a question that's cropped up and we're certainly not avoiding it. There is a session on EC tomorrow and we understand that it's difficult to understand why the two processes between the DCO process and the local plan are not aligned in some ways. They are very separate processes. We've done a lot of FAQs on this and we understand it's not the answer that people want to hear but it is the factual answer in this stage and I will put the FAQ on the specifics around that is on the website. But we do have a session on northeast Cambridge tomorrow where we will touch on that as well. What I'd like to do is I'd like to thank everybody for coming. I'd like to thank the panel, the fantastic this morning effort and content that's gone into it. Thank you for being here. Thank you for all of those who attended and thank you for your questions and also for your input into the Mentimeter. It's really good to see some of that stuff coming through from some of you as well. As I said, we're running the last of our theme sessions that they're all available on the website. Please go to the Greater Cambridge Planning but all local plan link on your screens right now. That will tell you how best you can get involved. You can participate in this. There are events as well that we're running as well. All those events are listed up on there and you can either get there through that or scanning their code. If you want to hear updates as well, a lot of the stuff on social media has been is trending with hashtag that you see local plan and I wish you all a fantastic rest of your week and hopefully we'll see you some of you again tomorrow.