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

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by the Minister for Housing and Planning on 7 April (HC40908), what is the evidential basis for the designation of the site of special scientific interest that prevented the development of the town due to jumping spiders.

Natural England (NE) notifies areas as Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) which, in its opinion are of special interest by reason of their flora, fauna, geological or physiographic features.

The Swanscombe Peninsula SSSI is a corridor of habitats connecting Ebbsfleet Valley with the southern shore of the River Thames between Dartford and Gravesend. It is considered by NE to be of special interest for its:

• Quaternary geology at Bakers Hole, a key Pleistocene site with a complex sequence of periglacial and temperate climate deposits and Middle Palaeolithic archaeology

• Populations of the plants divided sedge Carex divisa, yellow vetchling Lathyrus aphaca, slender hare’s-ear Bupleurum tenuissimum, Bithynian vetch Vicia bithynica and round-leaved wintergreen Pyrola rotundifolia subsp. maritima

• Assemblages of invertebrates associated with bare sand and chalk, open short swards, open water on disturbed mineral sediments, and saltmarsh and transitional brackish marsh

• Two diverse assemblages of breeding birds, one associated with lowland open waters and their margins, lowland fen and lowland damp grassland, the other with lowland scrub.

The more detailed evidence base for the designation of the SSSI is publicly available.