1-Oct-2026

Bringing into Use

This request was submitted, regarding duties under the CROW act, and Biodiversity, in the recent bringing into use applications PL/25/6639 and PL/26/02545.

A response !

1. Yes, HS2 are required to "seek to further the purpose of conserving and enhancing the natural beauty ..." but
2. "it is not possible to artificially identify aspects that specifically do this."
   
   and
   
3. "HS2 Ltd remains committed to seeking to achieve the goal of No Net Loss to
   Biodiversity, on a route-wide basis on Phase One." but
4. "HS2 Ltd does not calculate or report disaggregated No Net Loss values
   for individual locations, as progress towards the No Net Loss in Biodiversity goal is
   assessed on a route-wide basis."

As the biodiversity is a sum over individual landscape elements, it is not clear how they arrive at a route wide figure without assessing the values for each element. They appear to be relying on the 2012 metric, which somewhat predates the current Statutory Version, published in 2024.

Follow up

While Q3 concerned 'No Net Loss', Q4 was about the actual biodiversity values. Follow up request submitted, 1-Oct-26.

 

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