The Parish Online team have been working closely with the Community Nature team at Cambridgeshire County Council to make mapping nature recovery easier for local councils. We’ve enhanced the software with new editing tools, and provided extended free access to the software for all Cambridgeshire parishes through our Community Interest Company fund.
The Challenge
Cambridgeshire County Council needed a way for parish and town councils in their area to plot past, ongoing and future nature recovery projects. This would create a Community Nature Recovery Plan that aligns to the council’s Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS).
With 236 town and parish councils within Cambridgeshire, the challenge was to make sure that recording the information was easy, consistent and, critically, outlasted any changes with the incoming Local Government Reorganisation (LGR).
The Setup
Our team were approached by Cambridgeshire County Council (CCC) as many parish councils already used Parish Online Mapping. We were happy to get involved in the project.
We set about designing the collaborative layers that the councils would use to input the data; setting styling and attribution to align to LNRS reference datasets. We also streamlined the process for local ecology groups and volunteers to access the software as subcontractors, ensuring usage was kept within the terms of the various mapping data licences that Parish Online holds; notably the Public Sector Geospatial Agreement (PSGA).
There’s also a wealth of aerial photography ranging from the very latest updates through to photography dating back to 1999, giving a fascinating insight into environmental change.
Delivery
The projects is now live with many local councils accessing the software to build their Community Nature Recovery Plans. We’ve delivered training sessions and workshops to help those new to the software get to grips with it.
Parish Online contains hundreds of reference layers such as woodland opportunity, tree canopy, and many DEFRA datasets.
As well as the new collaborative layers, we’ve also incorporated other existing biodiversity and nature-related layers into the collection, such as hedgehog mapping, swift sightings, biodiversity corridors and hedgerow maps.
To enhance the collaborative element of this, we’ve also given Cambridgeshire County Council free access to XMAP to allow them to see the data across all parishes. This has allowed them to support the councils with fewer nature recovery projects, and to analyse the data to inform future strategy. It will also provide a reliable cloud GIS platform over the next few years as they navigate LGR.
Getting Involved
By Local Councils
Whilst the project was born in Cambridgeshire, the new layers can be used by any local council in Great Britain. Simply log into Parish Online Mapping (take a 90 day free trial if you’ve not used it before), find the “Biodiversity and Nature Recovery” collection, then start adding your information.
To sign up to Parish Online, go to www.parish-online.co.uk/mapping. Cambridgeshire parishes can use the code “lnrstrial” to get an additional 12 months use of the software for free.
We have a Nature Recovery tutorial on our Knowledge Base to help councils get started.
By Local Authorities
Higher tier authorities can also get involved by;
- contributing LNRS (or any) mapping data to feed into Parish Online, helping councils get a better understanding of their area (e.g. housing allocation, council land ownership etc),
- request a free XMAP account to view the nature recovery data
- Help raise awareness of the tool to parishes.
By doing the actions above, we’ll be able to extend the offer of free access for parishes new to our software.
Additional Information
We would like to thank Sandy, Stephanie, Phil and others within Cambridgeshire County Council for showing such great enthusiasm for the use of mapping and their genuine passion for nature recovery.
Through our Community Interest Company we love to show genuine social value by investing in projects like this. Climate, biodiversity and nature recovery are critically important topics and help everyone have better places to live and work.