The Joint Nature Conservation
Committee is established under Section 128 of the Environmental
Protection Act 1990 as the forum through which the three country
nature conservation bodies - English Nature (EN), Scottish Natural
Heritage (SNH) and the Countryside Council for Wales (CCW)
discharge their special statutory responsibilities for nature
conservation across Great Britain as a whole and internationally.
These responsibilities, known as the "special functions" of the
bodies are, broadly: to advise ministers on the development of such
wider nature conservation policies; to provide advice and knowledge
to anyone on nature conservation issues affecting Great Britain and
internationally; to establish common standards throughout Great
Britain for the monitoring of nature conservation and for research
into nature conservation and the analysis of results, and to
commission or support related research.
The special functions, set out in Section 133 of the Act, are
broadly drawn and, following devolution, it became difficult to
disentangle which of these represented reserved, and which devolved
matters. In the ten years since the establishment of JNCC, the
focus of its work had shifted from the GB science base to
representation of the UK position in European and wider
international fora. There was also a need to consider whether
Northern Ireland should be brought more fully into the picture. In
July 2000 the Department embarked on a review of the JNCC under the
supervision of a Steering Group including representatives of the
country bodies, and devolved administrations including Northern
Ireland, chaired by the Director of Wildlife and Countryside in the
then Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions
(since mid-2001 Director of Wildlife, Countryside and Flood
Management in Defra).
The Stage 1 report, published in March 2001, recommended that
JNCC be abolished and replaced by an independent NDPB, the UK
Nature Advisory Council, financed by DETR as was. However,
following consultation, there was no clear consensus in favour of
setting up a new, UK-wide, NDPB. Indeed, there was considerable
opposition to it. The responses highlighted the need to adapt and
build on existing arrangements to improve service delivery of
advice to Government. The main areas were to improve the
interpretation of the special functions in the light of devolution,
staffing arrangements, funding arrangements, corporate planning and
constitution of the joint committee.
Government Response
The Stage 2 report was published in January 2002 on Defra and
JNCC Web-sites. The document attached sets out the recommendations
of the report and the response of Government - including the
devolved administrations - to them. As the recommendations in the
report were scattered throughout, these have been grouped by
theme.