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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether his Department has made an assessment of the adequacy of the North Meadow Special Area of Conservation Interim Mitigation Strategy in the context of levels of residential development proposed within its Inner Zone of Influence; and whether Natural England plans to review or update that strategy.

An important part of the context is that not enough approved development has been built-out yet, so the adequacy of on- and off-site mitigation measures are yet to be tested. Monitoring cannot yet tell us whether these measures are sufficient or not as visitor numbers have not yet increased due to new growth and development.

As such, we do not feel that the interim strategy needs reviewing at this stage. We will continue to work with the Local Planning Authority, review monitoring data when it is available and review the success of the Strategy in 2028 before coming to conclusions about its effectiveness.