Great crested newts are a rapidly declining species and are fully protected under UK law, which makes it illegal to harm (or even move) them, or damage their habitat, unless a licence is in place.

This means that if you are planning any kind of development in the UK, you need to find out whether great crested newts are present in the local area and get a licence if there is a chance you will disturb or damage them or their habitats.

Where the NatureSpace District Licence Scheme is available, the statutory guidance for local planning authorities is clear. When development falls into the red or amber zones on the impact risk map, developers MUST prove to their local planning authorities that their development plans pose ‘no risk’ to great crested newts.

The scheme offers a year-round option for dealing with great crested newt requirements and is a risk-free solution, avoiding survey season restrictions, ensuring legal certainty and futureproofing your development. NatureSpace assesses development sites to determine the potential impact to great crested newts using our Natural England approved metric. Our ‘Impact Risk Map’ has been modelled to predict newt presence through habitat suitability and allows developers to check whether their site is likely to impact great crested newts.

Developers are provided with a certificate that can be submitted alongside their planning application, proving that they have compensated towards great crested newt conservation. Once planning permission is granted, the development can go ahead as planned and if newts do turn up, they can be moved to a safe location.

All fees paid to join the scheme help to deliver a long-term, landscape-scale, great crested newt conservation strategy. Read more about our conservation work.

By joining the District Licence Scheme you save yourself the time, cost and effort of:

• Commissioning surveys during the 3 month breeding season (March – June), sometimes over several years (dependent on development proposal).
• Carrying out lots of on-site mitigation (requiring pre-approval from Natural England), including months of trapping and miles of plastic fencing (often with high costs and rarely finding newts).
• Setting aside a lot of on-site land for newt mitigation that cannot be developed and creating habitats for newts on-site before the start of any development works.
• Committing to managing and monitoring your newt mitigation for years after development has finished.
• You can submit your certificate alongside your planning application, rather than having to wait for planning permission first (as with the Standard Licensing) – saving you time.
• Plus, if you are authorised under the scheme and great crested newts do turn up on-site, you do not have to stop development, you can simply move the newts to a safe location and carry on.

Natural England runs a District ‘Level’ Licensing scheme across different areas of England (there is no cross over of geographic location between the two schemes). Natural England’s scheme runs separately to the planning system and developers have to apply separately to Natural England for a licence. On-site options, mitigation requirements and compensation delivery also differ under the Natural England scheme, with Natural England only considering aquatic impacts and do not compensate for terrestrial habitats. There are also some local planning authorities who operate their own version of District Level Licensing.

Getting started with NatureSpace is quick and easy. You can complete our quick online enquiry form to get advice and a free quote within three full working days. If you wish to join the scheme you will then need a qualified ecologist to fill out an application form to provide an overview of your development – specifying which habitats and aquatic features will be impacted on-site. Details of any surveys already carried out should also be included to support your application.

As well as the application form, the following maps should be supplied:
·       Red line site boundary
·       Locations of all ponds on-site and within 500m of the site
·       UKHabs or Phase 1 survey data for the site
·       Site masterplan or development layout

As part of the assessment, we will create an impact plan map and provide a site assessment – outlining the first and second stage fee (if required) and any mitigation requirements that might be applicable, you can then decide whether you wish to enter the scheme.

If you have joined the scheme and have been authorised by the local planning authority, if newts are found on or near your site, you are covered under the Licence to move them to a safe location and carry on with work.

Yes, we offer no obligation upfront site assessments, which have been introduced to provide cost certainty from the outset, providing developers with all the information they need to join the scheme. This free assessment route has a turnaround time of six weeks – which is still significantly quicker than the Standard Licence application route. To qualify for a free upfront assessment, you need to have a validated planning application for the site.

(Please note the free assessment summary cannot be used to support your planning application, it is only for use as a quantification of costs and requirements of the District Licence).

The quickest way for developers to enter the scheme is by submitting an enquiry to NatureSpace and payment of the relevant first stage fee – which guarantees a full impact Report within 10 working days (the Report will also outline a proportionate second-stage fee, if it is required).

Enquire now.

Report fees are simply based on development scale: minor developments are charged £5,000 and major developments are charged £10,000 (split into £5k pre-consent, and 5k if/when consent is granted). This reflects the level of work associated with the size of sites. Householders, infill and low impact developments have a different charging structure.

Certificate fees are calculated by the assessment and our Natural England-approved metric. This fee is entirely impact dependent and a summation of aquatic, terrestrial and linear impacts. Multiple different factors feed into the impact calculator – habitat type, condition, connectivity and distance from pond all influence the terrestrial calculation, whilst aquatic impacts take into account the type, condition and connectivity of waterbodies.

The metric result will depend on the ecological information submitted, which is fine-tuned to pick up small details your ecologist submits. We are held to very strict and objective protocols to ensure that conservation status is improved as a result of the scheme being used.

The Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE) and Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust (ARC) modelled our first Impact Risk Maps. This expertise is now in-house, although the experts at ARC, DICE and Freshwater Habitats Trust remain involved to guide us on latest technologies, environmental data and research. The models are derived from stratified sampling regional surveys of ponds where eDNA sampling, extended HSI surveys and water quality are recorded. Landscape scale habitat maps and great crested newt records from local record centres are also incorporated and the connectivity between waterbodies taken into account. Once the data is modelled, the outputs are ground-truthed and sense-checked by national and local experts to identify any artefacts of the model and ensure important locations for newts are considered correctly.

We operate across 12 counties and over 70 local planning authorities across England including: Berkshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, East Sussex, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Milton Keynes, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Staffordshire, Surrey and West Sussex.

View the local planning authorities here.

Of course – we would be happy to help with a range of publicity material should you wish to publicise your financial support of our long-term, landscape-scale, great crested newt conservation scheme.

All fees paid to join the scheme help deliver a long-term, landscape-scale, great crested newt conservation strategy. Funds from both first and second stage fees are apportioned as follows:

One third of the funds cover:

• The management and administration of the scheme, including licence renewals with Natural England.
  The annual monitoring and reporting on the scheme to Natural England.
  All NatureSpace staff time and costs, including the ‘District Licensing Officers’ that provide advice and support to local planning authorities.
  The initial (and repeated) surveys and modelling that are needed to produce the ‘impact risk maps’.

Two thirds of the funds cover:

• The costs of the creation, management and monitoring of all the compensatory ponds and terrestrial habitat:
• – directly by monies paid to landowners to create and manage ponds.
• – indirectly through staff and administration costs in the not-for-profit Newt Conservation Partnership.
• – Half of the direct costs are set aside in an endowment fund – this can only be used for newt management and ensures future management for all ponds and habitat created under the scheme for 25 years.
• – it also covers the long-term monitoring and reporting of all the sites.

Fees are always proportional to the net impact – Larger developments or those with high impacts will incur higher fees as the compensation required to cover these is greater. The scheme delivers and carefully manages high-quality aquatic and terrestrial habitat as well as contractually managing these habitats for 25 years+. The second-stage fees are carefully calculated for each case through the metric assessment and are non-negotiable, all developers are fully advised of the total costs within the NatureSpace Report, and the fees are guaranteed for three years if you choose to join at a later date (providing habitats/impacts have not changed).

Our District Licensing Scheme has been carefully designed to offer numerous benefits both to developers and planners, but also to protect and conserve great crested newts.

That is why together with our partners, the Amphibian and Reptile Conversation Trust, Freshwater Habitats Trust, and the Newt Conservation Partnership, we have developed a long-term, fully-funded landscape-scale conservation strategy for great crested newts – the first of its kind in the UK.

When developers enter our scheme, the funds are used for scheme delivery which provides large-scale, upfront and long-term habitat creation, management and monitoring at compensation sites across the region. We aim to increase the number of high-quality, clean water ponds which are connected by suitable terrestrial habitat, creating a network of high-quality habitats where newt populations can thrive.

For every pond occupied by great crested newts that is lost through development, we create or restore at least four high-quality ponds, and ensure suitable surrounding terrestrial habitat is in place.

In most cases, on-site mitigation is not required – however some mitigation may be needed in higher risk areas (red zone sites), but on-site requirements through the scheme are significantly reduced when compared to Standard Licensing.

Most compensation delivered through the scheme are conducted under private agreements with landowners, where public access is not available. However, a handful of compensation sites are publicly accessible either on council-owned land or Wildlife Trust nature reserves, please get in touch if you would like further information on these, or if you would like some publicity material.

Regular updates on the compensation delivered by the Newt Conservation Partnership (supported by Amphibian and Reptile Conservation (ARC) and Freshwater Habitats Trust) are posted through on our website and social media channels.

The Impact Risk Zone Maps (IRZs) available for download from this website are of a low resolution due to website storage management and intellectual property reasons. They only provide an illustrative overview of the potential risks to great crested newts in the regions indicated. As such they are not suitable for smaller-scale parcels of land and do not provide a substitute for surveys or a full desk study. We do however provide high resolution images for individual sites free of charge when an enquiry is submitted.

All copyrights, database rights and rights in data subsisting in the maps, databases and/or data underlying the maps are owned or licenced by NatureSpace Partnership Limited trading as NatureSpace™.

By downloading any of the maps made available on this website you agree:

· Not to share any map in whole or in part with any third party.

· Not to reproduce, edit or modify any map in whole or in part.

· Not to make any commercial use of any map without written permission from NatureSpace.

· NatureSpace neither represents nor warrants the accuracy of the maps nor any underlying data nor that the maps are comprehensive or fit for any purpose.

· That the contact information you have provided is true and accurate.