Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps the Government has taken to ensure that High Speed Two does not cause the death of barn owls.

HS2 Ltd has produced a barn owl mitigation plan to manage and reduce the anticipated significant effects to barn owls caused by construction and operation of the Phase One scheme. The plan has been developed by a team of professional ecologists, including a barn owl expert, and has been informed by additional research undertaken by the British Trust for Ornithology.

The plan assumes that 80 pairs are affected by the Phase One scheme and consists of measures to: avoid disturbance to the species during construction; reduce the collision risk of the railway to the birds; provide new artificial nesting sites at a safe distance from the railway; and monitor the new nesting sites to ensure uptake by barn owls.

It is expected that the barn owl mitigation plan will be expanded and refined for future phases of HS2.