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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he has taken to support the conservation of the barn owl population in (a) general and (b) Romford constituency.

Environmental land management schemes include financial incentives for actions that are beneficial for barn owls, for example, the provision of nesting boxes. Through the Green Recovery Challenge Fund, the Government granted £123,700 to the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust’s Owl Box Initiative. The project was set up to help support barn owls by providing nest boxes for them on farms and researching barn owls’ farmland habitat use across the southwest of England.

Furthermore, from July this year, restrictions on the open use of second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides will be brought into force to avoid negative impacts on non-target species such as barn owls.

We have no records of any actions for this species specific to the Romford area.