Issue - meetings

To receive an update on Local Nature Reserves.

The Cabinet Member for Neighbourhoods, Planning and Sustainability, presented the report of the Director for Prosperity and Investment, which sought Cabinet’s approval of the declaration of new areas of Local Nature Reserve (LNR) under Sections 19 and 21 of the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949.

Councillor Healy said that the two new local nature reserves were in central Newport and Hurley Brook. Over the last few years, she had several tours of Newport with ward members, the Town Council, the Civic Society and others and on most visits, she had been made clear of the desire to look at the management of a number of sites throughout central Newport and how they could be brought together.

Those representations had been heard and Newport Canal, which was already a site of special scientific interest - a designation that had a higher level of protection than a local nature reserve - but also connected to the canal, the recognition that Strine Brook Park and Victoria Park, which was one of the Council’s green flag parks, were connected to the canal and that by designating the whole area as a local nature reserve, allowed the management of all of those green spaces to be brought together and much more cohesive. The site benefitted from lots of volunteer input and there was a new friends’ group that had been started up and Newport in Bloom also did quite a lot of work around the canal area and other parts of what would be the local nature reserve.

Shrewsbury Newport Canal Trust had also done a lot of work over many years in that area and would be a fantastic new local nature reserve for the borough. If approved, officers would work with local members, the Town Council and these volunteer groups to determine that future management and the naming of the reserve as that needed to be led locally.

Hurley Brook was the other new site, that was in the centre of the Hadleigh and Leegomery ward. The site followed the Hurley Brook with woodlands and meadows attached and supported a wide range of flora and fauna. It was situated in the middle of a quite densely populated part of town and this designation meant that those local people had got easy access to very high-quality green space. Like at Newport, the ward members and especially the chair of Hadley and Leegomery Parish Council had championed this site, which also had a very active friends’ group.

The Council had done some wonderful projects in partnership with those to enhance the nature conservation value of the site and and also to monitor the water quality of the brook to ensure that the Environment Agency and Severn Trent Water met their statutory obligations and worked to reduce pollution there.

On the amended boundaries, sites that were previously approved back in September 2022, the Council was looking to separate out some of those areas and had brought a number of sites together to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 53