Presenting the information

Authorities, including planning authorities, need enough information to decide whether your work will adversely affect red squirrels. This includes a summary of:

• how you have investigated the situation;
• what you found; and
• what action you propose to avoid or minimise the impacts.

This information is most simply presented as a Red Squirrel Protection Plan. This should include:

• Where you looked for information and the results of these data searches;
• Details of field work, including techniques, dates, times, weather conditions and any limitations of these;
• Qualification and/or experience of the surveyor in these techniques;
• Large-scale maps presenting the area of search including any limitations, e.g. access;
• Locations of dreys (and other squirrel signs/sightings);
• Any sightings of grey squirrels;
• Description of the habitat and the relevance of this to the squirrel population, e.g. feeding sites, a corridor linking feeding areas, etc;
• Importance of the site/area in a wider (regional/national) context;
• Recommended mitigation proposals;
• Any residual impacts (following mitigation);
• An Appendix setting out a summary of the legal protection afforded to the species.

Best practice advice is to submit this in a form that the Local Authority can collate and forward to the Local Record Centre or NBN, e.g. Word document, pdf maps and grid references in Excel. It should also be summarised in an Executive summary containing the key issues as a quick reference for the planning authority.

Further information on the preparation of Species Protection Plans is available on our licencing pages.