High Speed 2 Railway Line: Biodiversity

(asked on 3rd September 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what plans he has to ensure that HS2 Phase 2b delivers a net gain in biodiversity; and how that net gain will be quantified.


Answered by
Andrew Stephenson Portrait
Andrew Stephenson
Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
This question was answered on 9th September 2021

In June 2021, the government announced its commitment that HS2 will aim to deliver a net gain in biodiversity for the HS2 Crewe-Manchester phase, going beyond the existing target to deliver no net loss of biodiversity.

HS2 Ltd reports to DfT on quantification of biodiversity delivery. HS2 Ltd is employing a Defra metric-based approach ('the HS2 Metric'). This metric was last updated in 2020 for Phase 2b to capture the functionality incorporated in the latest Defra biodiversity metric tool at the time (Biodiversity Metric 2.0).

Reticulating Splines