Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, for what reason two pages were redacted in Natural England’s response to EIR2026/00223 on its report on managed burning.

The redactions made to Natural England’s response to EIR2026/00223, were applied because the material contained third-party personal data, which is exempt from disclosure under the Environmental Information Regulations. In addition, some material was outside the scope of the requestor’s EIR enquiry and was removed on that basis.

The Department does not consider it necessary to place the requested documents in the Library.

The NEER155 evidence review was carried out by Natural England, the Government’s statutory adviser on nature. As the statutory adviser responsible for the review, the tasks associated with carrying out that review including the peer review element were matters for Natural England. NEER155 built on Natural England’s 2013 review (NEER004) by incorporating 102 new studies on the effects of burning on peatlands. The external peer reviewers for NEER155 were leading peatland experts at major universities and other expert institutions.