Suffolk’s vision for nature recovery

Suffolk County Council is one of 48 responsible authorities in England, appointed by The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to lead on preparing its LNRS.

The council’s cabinet will seek to approve it for publication at their meeting on Tuesday 9 September.

The strategy’s aim is to address the decline in nature, identify ways to help it recover and deliver wider benefits such as reducing flood risk.

Together these strategies will form a national ‘nature network’, proposing actions such as the creation of wetlands, restoration of peatlands, planting of trees and hedgerows, and more sustainable management of existing woodlands and other habitats like grasslands.

Other Suffolk local authorities, nature experts, farmers and a wide range of interested organisations have contributed to Suffolk’s strategy, along with members of the public.

The process of creating the strategy began in 2022 and has had over 50,000 Suffolk engagements recorded at over 250 events. This culminated in a public consultation in Spring this year, with over 500 responses.

Councillor Philip Faircloth-Mutton, Suffolk County Council’s cabinet member for Environment, Communities and Equality, said:

“What this process has shown us, is that nature truly means a great deal to the people of Suffolk.

“There is a clear passion for caring for wildlife, but also recognition of the physical and mental health benefits of a thriving natural environment.

“I’d like to thank members of the public, landowners and experts for their contributions, enabling us to agree priorities for nature recovery in Suffolk and propose the actions to reverse this decline.

“This is an important document, it will hopefully be the catalyst to reversing the decline in Suffolk’s nature. In turn, this can help in many other ways by mitigating inland flooding risk, creating new green spaces to improve our health and wellbeing, and supporting farmers to bring new funding into the rural economy and generate employment and training opportunities.”

Suffolk has worked very closely with Norfolk County Council, who are also preparing their own LNRS. The authorities formed the Norfolk and Suffolk Nature Recovery Partnership, to identify common themes and opportunities to enable nature recovery support.

Subject to approval by the cabinet at Suffolk County Council, the LNRS will then be shared with district and borough councils and the Broads Authority for a final consultation before publication by the end of October.