This is the alternative to applying for a mitigation license if a development is likely to affect great crested newts. It has been running in prototype since 2018, with three authorities having adopted the alternative for some years, and now having some results to show.
There are now over 122 local planning authorities signed up to District Licensing. This means a developer can use district licensing instead of mitigation licensing. While the Agencies and local government seem excited about this alternative, the uptake by developers is lagging. The scheme was introduced to provide a simplified approach towards conservation of this protected amphibian. Also, conservationists quite rightly felt that a district-wide approach was superior in terms of maintaining populations in a wider area. A mitigation license only really concerns itself with populations at the site level and can lead to piecemeal measures that do not take into account wider populations and other conservation efforts. There is nothing to object to regarding this approach. However, there needs to be developer 'buy in' to this. The number one problem is that the developer has to agree to a District License before they know how much it will cost. There is a charge levied depending on the quantum of habitat lost from the development. And the District scheme has its own bureaucratic requirements. A developer is likely to stick with mitigation licensing as by now most are familiar with the process and ecologists with capability to undertake mitigation licensing are available. In January, Natural England convened a panel to review the outcomes in the longest running District Licensing Schemes. These are in: Woking, the Nature Space Partnership, Telford & Wrekin Council and Dorset Council. The results are ambiguous: the data sets are small and each of the four schemes uses different data to assess outcomes. The results to date move the knowledge base no further. The main Agency focus is now to collate data and make some use and some sense of it.
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