Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether her Department is taking steps to help improve the condition of sites of special scientific interest.

The Environmental Improvement Plan set out a range of actions to recover our protected sites as a crucial part of delivering our legal targets to halt and reverse nature’s decline.

This includes the 25 Year Environment Plan goal of restoring 75% of our one million hectares of terrestrial and freshwater protected sites to favourable condition by 2042. The Environmental Improvement Plan also set new interim targets that by 31 January 2028, all sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs) will have an up-to-date condition assessment; and 50% of SSSIs will have actions on track to achieve favourable condition.