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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many applications for individual licences were made in 2020 for the control of common pest and predatory corvids to conserve wildlife within European protected sites and 300m buffer zones; and how many of those have been granted.

Natural England has received approximately 160 applications to control Corvid species on or close to European protected sites. To date, 26 of these applications have been granted, 8 rejected, with 126 still to be determined or have been withdrawn. For some applications, not all corvid species for which a licence has been requested have been granted.