Heather Burning: Licensing
(asked on 3rd March 2021) - View Source
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many licences for heather burning have been granted by Natural England in each of the last five years, by region.
Answered by
Rebecca Pow
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Heather and Grass etc Burning (England) Regulations 2007 set out the rules for heather burning. The Regulations allow most burning to be carried out without a licence but in certain specified situations a licence is required from Natural England. In the period 2016 -2020 Natural England issued 27 licences under the Regulations, none of which covered the burning of heathland or heather.
People wishing to burn heather on Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) need a consent from Natural England under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, 1981. We do not have a systematic process for collecting information on the habitats that we have consented operations on. We cannot therefore provide figures for the numbers of consents that we have issued for the burning of heathland or heather. We are currently investing to improve our records of consents.