With just two countryside rangers managing nine local nature reserves in Sandwell, you can see how highly this local authority values its designated sites. You can also see that in planning policy terms, and planning officer terms, they have also demonstrated that they do not even know where these areas are located or following relevant policy of material planning considerations when delegating reports in that regard.
The Sandwell Local Plan (SLP) is a manifesto for house building and offers nothing for wildlife or its remaining fragmented habitat. Unfortunately it mirrors a national policy made by corrupt political scum of all main parties who have made it this way by classifying wildlife in terms of “units” and “credits” which are transferable to tick a box. We are therefore introduced to the terms “biodiversity net gain”, “biodiversity credits” and “nature recovery strategy maps” which are meaningless theoretical bollocks allowing desk jockeys for environmental consultancies (planning enablers), with not much time on their hands to spend outdoors, but plenty of time to drink their lattes in a cosy warm office preparing shite like this.
Two terms are defined and are important to this post, but they are largely theoretical and wordy . I have underlined the statement below which is crucial.
Biodiversity net gain definition
“An approach to development and land management that aims to leave the natural environment in a measurably better state than it was beforehand. The objective requires the biodiversity value attributable to a development to exceed pre-development biodiversity value by at least 10%. Post-development biodiversity value may comprise onsite habitat, offsite biodiversity gain and biodiversity credits.”
Nature Recovery Network definition
“An expanding, increasingly connected, network of wildlife-rich habitats supporting species recovery, alongside wider benefits such as carbon capture, water quality improvements, natural flood risk management and recreation. It includes the existing network of protected sites and other wildlife rich habitats as well as and landscape or catchment scale recovery areas where there is co ordinated action for species and habitats.”
The SNE2 policy that the council have produced in the SLP is shown below and explains their rationale.
I put in an FOI to Sandwell council regards the nonsense they had spouted about certain sites they had considered in a cabinet report prior to the publication of the current plan out for consultation. I wanted to know which consultancy had drawn up the garbage as well as the methodology used to produce the eight listed sites.
The council replied and gave me a link to the study below conducted by an entity called “Lepus consulting” who also are behind the sustainability appraisal for the SLP.
Sandwell_Biodiversity_Net_Gain__BNG__Strategy__September_2023_ (2)
So let us interrogate this document and see it for what it is, which is a very weak report full of theory, very little practical surveying and omissions of certain sites which do not make sense.
“Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council (SMBC) has commissioned Lepus Consulting to undertake a study to identify and undertake an assessment of habitats within council-owned sites in Sandwell to establish their suitability for use as potential habitat banks for the delivery of BNG.”
The first thing to point out is that SMBC ignore privately owned sites- the ones that are most likely to be built upon and which are also the most likely to be destroy wildlife habitat that has naturally re-wilded, like the ones off Rattechain SH35 and SH36.
“In the State of the Nature Report in 2019 headline data indicated that the abundance and distribution of the UK’s biodiversity has, on average, declined since 1970, with a 13% decline in average species abundance3 . This is attributable to a number of pressures including intensive farming, climate change and urbanisation which have led to pollution, habitat loss and degradation.”
3 State-of-Nature-2019-UK-full-report.pdf
I do not argue with their opening statements, but the threat of “urbanisation” is exactly what the SLP is proposing in real terms.
We learn that Sandwell has nine nature reserves, including Sheepwash which is also a SINC but looking at a map of these sites on page 32 of the PDF you can see how grossly disproportionate nature reserves are in Sandwell with only one in Tipton and none at all in Wednesbury, Smethwick or Oldbury- this makes up four of Sandwell’s six towns!
Why is West Bromwich stacked with nature reserves and little elsewhere?
The meat on the bones of this pathetic report is revealed at 6.2 onwards.
- They only visited sites once due to “time constraints” Why is time a factor in this report, as it seems that this was done by the council on the hoof to attempt a hurried justification of coming up with random sites they could use.
- They visited in the summer months when nature is probably at its most secretive with increased footfall of people. Different species are obviously present at different times of year, and passage migrant species do not appear to have even come into the equation of “biodiversity”.
- They do not appear to have used any Eco record reports, or local information of groups like sandnats, or certainly Friends of Sheepwash to inform their observations or knowledge of sites. They undertook no “bio-blitz” of any site.
- They could not even map some areas
- They do not even attempt to investigate water habitats at all, again due to “time constraints”.
- “Further assessments” needed- because theirs was not good enough.
- The worst part about this whole “strategy” is the failure to even look at privately owned sites. These are the ones of course like SH35 and SH36 on the doorstep of Sheepwash and in the nature recovery area map that the council expect will be boosted by a 10% increase in on site biodiversity. Has it not occurred to these idiots that they do not have any knowledge of what nature exists on these sites but they expect developers will be honest about what is there so that their paid liars of environmental consultants will produce a report claiming that they can boost BNG by 10% by creating a token hedge or swale (dirty surface water ditch ) like the one on the picture below?
Don’t try and tell me this has any nature value FFS. It’s a dirty fucking ditch!
- The cracker can best be described a “a pikey horse and car dumping shithole”. There is no point boosting biodiversity in such a place as the frequent weed dumping disposal in buckets is the only thing growing there, and they have only created this for political reasons due to Princes End ward being a swing seat area.
- The Menzies open space contains the contaminated Millpool or Milky- contaminated by Bitumenous waste that was not prevented from being further polluted ironically when the site was turned into housing! The remediation fraud of the developers were not protected by any body including the EA and the useless officers at Sandwell council, harming wildlife and causing significant pollution to an already contaminated water body. The cover up by all concerned was massive and a disgrace.
- I set the Millpool story out in four parts which offer definitive proof of why post reclamation of industrial sites and brownfield land destroys nature and habitat.
Millpool West Bromwich#2 The Meltdown of W H Keys | What Lies Beneath Rattlechain Lagoon?
- Of course Lepus know nothing of this as they do not have time, but do not even look at improving the water habitat at the pool either!
There is no explanation as to why private sites were not identified as habitat banks or even surveyed.
- There has to be concern that this very point has already surfaced with the planning application at the Coneygree site in Tipton- owned by the same entity who now proposes sites SH35 and SH36 and previously by the conmen foundry sand dumpers who abandoned it and left both sites in the state they are in and future dependent on money from the public purse.
‘Wildlife buffer zone’ to be removed to make way for industrial warehouse in Tipton | Express & Star
The council had no policy when this farce unfolded due to national policy failure, but they do not appear to recognise they will have no basis of knowledge as to the real nature value of these private sites.
As it is, we are aware that the former Duport’s Tip area next to Rattlechain contains a rare butterfly- the small blue, (Cupido minimus), Britain’s smallest butterfly as well as the associated kidney vetch which its caterpillars eat. It is protected in the UK under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, 1981 and a priority species under the UK Post-2010 Biodiversity Framework. I had a site walkover with naturalist Darrell Harrison who found the butterfly and several unusual plants on the site of local rarity.
Small blue on kidney vetch Darrell Harrison seen at the SH35 area in June 2024.
Of course such sites already connected to Sheepwash and the wildlife corridor of the canal could be used as habitat banks, but if only someone would tell Sandwell council that instead of wanting to shove more trees into dog shit parks like Tividale to tick a box.
It is also interesting that just this week the leader of Sandwell council has proposed an animal welfare taskforce policy. I have concerns that this will be nothing more than a pontificating talking shop like the unsound policy SNE2 above, but what is interesting is one of the claims in the new vision Notice of Motion – 29 October 2024.
“Council notes that:
Protecting wildlife and natural habitats is crucial for maintaining biodiversity and ecological balance.”
Words are cheap eh when your planning policy overrides it!