Oxfordshire's Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS)

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Consultation has concluded

The Oxfordshire Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS) was developed through engagement with over 3,000 people and organisations in Oxfordshire. Throughout 2024, the Local Nature Recovery Strategy, partners, and Oxfordshire County Council listened to your views on biodiversity priorities, species actions, and mapped locations for nature recovery. This included 50 events and meetings during the public consultation to invite people to consult on the strategy.

Between the 18th October - 1st December 2024, we asked for your thoughts on the draft strategy to make sure that it reflected local biodiversity priorities. We received over 2,100 responses through the survey, emails, and an online map tool. The LNRS then developed and shaped the final strategy based on your suggestions and responses. Thank you for helping to shape nature recovery priorities in Oxfordshire.

You can visit our Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS) webpage, which from 12 November will include the final version of the strategy.



You Said, We Did

You said:

  • Add priorities that focus on achieving connectivity when creating habitats, and to improve water quality in Oxfordshire. Add more actions into the urban priority to encourage features such as SuDS and street trees to benefit biodiversity as well as people.
  • There were species that you wanted to see added, removed, or edited on the species list.
  • Revitalise community spaces—such the grounds of community centres and churches—could help support more wildlife.
  • Suggested additional areas for inclusion in the Local Habitat Map, lots of individual requests, parish and nature recovery group requests, and requests to include all of the Conservation Target Areas.
  • Asked for clarity around the process used to develop and update the Local Habitat Map.
  • Shorten the documents to reduce repetition and improve accessibility to those who wish to use and understand the strategy. Requests were also made to clarify the vision of the strategy and principles to guide it.
  • The ArcGIS MAP is amazing and offers valuable features and suggestions were made for improvements to the map tool.

We did:

  • Added priorities to (1) emphasize connectivity as a priority across the county, and (2) to focus on improving water quality. Additional actions were also added under the urban priorities including to incentivise street trees and SuDS.
  • Adjusted text to reflect local species projects and knowledge, we added 19 species to the priorities list, and removed 2.
  • Created an action that specifically encourages complementary biodiversity and nature enhancements in community used spaces and mapped this to a range of places used by communities including community spaces, religious grounds, playing fields, and other spaces.
  • Added a number of new suggested areas to the map (including individual spaces, parish and nature recovery group focus areas, and all of the Conservation Target Areas) as shown in red on the updated map, reflecting direct results of consultation feedback.
  • Provided detailed documentation on the website explaining the methodology and steps taken to create the map, enabling stakeholders to understand how decisions were made.
  • Shortened the description of biodiversity in Oxfordshire significantly, made the vision clear and bold with guiding principles, and reduced repetition in the other documents.
  • Improved the map tool further, adjusted the zoom sensitivity, and created a map viewer that has clear instructions, videos, and the ability to download data to use in your projects.

If you'd like to hear more about what you said and what we did, please read this document: LNRS response to consultation.

The changes made by the LNRS reflect a genuine and comprehensive process of stakeholder engagement and demonstrate a commitment to producing a locally informed, accessible strategy for nature recovery in Oxfordshire that puts ecology first. The team made as many changes as were possible with the resources and data available. In future, we expect that even more improvements could be made to the LNRS and we remain committed to creating a process of engagement throughout delivery, review, and republication.


Next steps
The LNRS partners can all now focus on the delivery of this strategy. Everyone can be a delivery partner by taking an action that is relevant and possible for them whether that's supporting nature at home, at school, in parks, gardens, farmland, or on land that organisations or individuals own.

If you'd like to see what actions you could take to contribute to the LNRS or if you want to tell us about something you've done - have a look at our LNRS webpage where you can do this.


Future changes to the LNRS
The LNRS is expected to remain in place, unchanged for between 3 - 10 years. In 3 - 10 years time, the Secretary of State is expected to request a review and republication (an update) of all LNRS using new, local data.


Information about our previous LNRS engagement process and consultation
In February - March 2024, we asked people and organisations in Oxfordshire about their priorities for nature’s recovery (phase 1). Alongside this survey we held 14 workshops/events across Oxfordshire and online.

In May - June 2024, we also collected information about specific locations where people and organisations had been planning actions to recover biodiversity in Oxfordshire to align the LNRS with local effort where possible (phase 2).

In October - December 2024, the LNRS consultation survey (phase 3) invited local people and organisations to tell us whether they thought the documents and map were correct, or whether they wanted to recommend changes before we finalised the strategy.

The Oxfordshire Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS) was developed through engagement with over 3,000 people and organisations in Oxfordshire. Throughout 2024, the Local Nature Recovery Strategy, partners, and Oxfordshire County Council listened to your views on biodiversity priorities, species actions, and mapped locations for nature recovery. This included 50 events and meetings during the public consultation to invite people to consult on the strategy.

Between the 18th October - 1st December 2024, we asked for your thoughts on the draft strategy to make sure that it reflected local biodiversity priorities. We received over 2,100 responses through the survey, emails, and an online map tool. The LNRS then developed and shaped the final strategy based on your suggestions and responses. Thank you for helping to shape nature recovery priorities in Oxfordshire.

You can visit our Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS) webpage, which from 12 November will include the final version of the strategy.



You Said, We Did

You said:

  • Add priorities that focus on achieving connectivity when creating habitats, and to improve water quality in Oxfordshire. Add more actions into the urban priority to encourage features such as SuDS and street trees to benefit biodiversity as well as people.
  • There were species that you wanted to see added, removed, or edited on the species list.
  • Revitalise community spaces—such the grounds of community centres and churches—could help support more wildlife.
  • Suggested additional areas for inclusion in the Local Habitat Map, lots of individual requests, parish and nature recovery group requests, and requests to include all of the Conservation Target Areas.
  • Asked for clarity around the process used to develop and update the Local Habitat Map.
  • Shorten the documents to reduce repetition and improve accessibility to those who wish to use and understand the strategy. Requests were also made to clarify the vision of the strategy and principles to guide it.
  • The ArcGIS MAP is amazing and offers valuable features and suggestions were made for improvements to the map tool.

We did:

  • Added priorities to (1) emphasize connectivity as a priority across the county, and (2) to focus on improving water quality. Additional actions were also added under the urban priorities including to incentivise street trees and SuDS.
  • Adjusted text to reflect local species projects and knowledge, we added 19 species to the priorities list, and removed 2.
  • Created an action that specifically encourages complementary biodiversity and nature enhancements in community used spaces and mapped this to a range of places used by communities including community spaces, religious grounds, playing fields, and other spaces.
  • Added a number of new suggested areas to the map (including individual spaces, parish and nature recovery group focus areas, and all of the Conservation Target Areas) as shown in red on the updated map, reflecting direct results of consultation feedback.
  • Provided detailed documentation on the website explaining the methodology and steps taken to create the map, enabling stakeholders to understand how decisions were made.
  • Shortened the description of biodiversity in Oxfordshire significantly, made the vision clear and bold with guiding principles, and reduced repetition in the other documents.
  • Improved the map tool further, adjusted the zoom sensitivity, and created a map viewer that has clear instructions, videos, and the ability to download data to use in your projects.

If you'd like to hear more about what you said and what we did, please read this document: LNRS response to consultation.

The changes made by the LNRS reflect a genuine and comprehensive process of stakeholder engagement and demonstrate a commitment to producing a locally informed, accessible strategy for nature recovery in Oxfordshire that puts ecology first. The team made as many changes as were possible with the resources and data available. In future, we expect that even more improvements could be made to the LNRS and we remain committed to creating a process of engagement throughout delivery, review, and republication.


Next steps
The LNRS partners can all now focus on the delivery of this strategy. Everyone can be a delivery partner by taking an action that is relevant and possible for them whether that's supporting nature at home, at school, in parks, gardens, farmland, or on land that organisations or individuals own.

If you'd like to see what actions you could take to contribute to the LNRS or if you want to tell us about something you've done - have a look at our LNRS webpage where you can do this.


Future changes to the LNRS
The LNRS is expected to remain in place, unchanged for between 3 - 10 years. In 3 - 10 years time, the Secretary of State is expected to request a review and republication (an update) of all LNRS using new, local data.


Information about our previous LNRS engagement process and consultation
In February - March 2024, we asked people and organisations in Oxfordshire about their priorities for nature’s recovery (phase 1). Alongside this survey we held 14 workshops/events across Oxfordshire and online.

In May - June 2024, we also collected information about specific locations where people and organisations had been planning actions to recover biodiversity in Oxfordshire to align the LNRS with local effort where possible (phase 2).

In October - December 2024, the LNRS consultation survey (phase 3) invited local people and organisations to tell us whether they thought the documents and map were correct, or whether they wanted to recommend changes before we finalised the strategy.