Local Nature Recovery Strategy

1. Stakeholder engagement

From the beginning of the process, Norfolk County Council engaged with a wide range of local stakeholders. These include:

• Conservation groups
• The public
• Landowners
• Land managers
• Government bodies
• Local authorities
• Businesses and community organisations

Engagement activities included:

• A public and landowner survey
• A series of workshops with the Partnership Steering Group and Themed Working Groups
• Attending various webinars and events

The engagement process has been crucial to ensuring the strategy has local support. It has also helped make sure it is geographically and ecologically relevant to Norfolk.

2. Development of the Strategy

The core delivery team at Norfolk County Council were responsible for creating and drafting the Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS). Drafting the LNRS included input from a range of sources, including:

• Geospatial data sets
• Existing environmental strategies
• Documents and action plans
• Direct feedback from local experts and stakeholders

Collaboration with stakeholders played a central role in shaping the strategy throughout the process.

3. Supporting authority consultations and public consultation

To gain formal approval and endorsement of the LNRS, Responsible Authorities had to undertake three consultations before its publication:

• Two of these consultations were with our Supporting Authorities:
  • Natural England
  • All Norfolk's Local Planning Authorities
  • The Broads Authority
  • Forestry Commission
  • Environment Agency
• The other was a Public Consultation

The purpose of these consultations were to gain feedback on:

• The Statement of Biodiversity Priorities and Local Habitat Map, as well as the existing nature in Norfolk
• Opportunities we've identified for nature's recovery
• Case studies demonstrating success of nature recovery work
• Our methodologies for creating the LNRS

We incorporated feedback from the consultations into the final strategy, before its publication.