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 provides guidance or best practice to local authorities on integrating animal protection measures into local transport and infrastructure planning.

When determining any planning application, it is the responsibility of the local planning authority to ensure that protected species are fully considered and that ecological surveys have been carried out where appropriate. Natural England has issued Standing Advice to assist both local planning authorities and developers in deciding whether there is a reasonable likelihood of protected species being present on a proposed development site. It provides detailed advice on those protected species most often affected by development to enable an assessment to be made of the suitability of a protected species survey and, where appropriate, a mitigation strategy to protect the species affected by the development.

To help integrate nature into new development, the government has also amended the National Planning Policy Framework. This encourages the incorporation of features, such as swift bricks and hedgehog highways, to protect threatened species through local plans and decisions on planning applications.