Decision details

The former LCC PID&T Committee, at its meeting on the 8th September 1993, resolved, in respect of Biological Heritage Sites: 'that following consultation with English Nature, Lancashire Wildlife Trust, District Councils and other interested bodies, the County Planning Officer be authorised to finalise the guidelines and sites list and keep them updated'.

The document Biological Heritage Sites – Guidelines for Site Selection sets out the rationale and qualifying thresholds used to identify Biological Heritage Sites. Guidance published by Defra identifies the need for local site systems to be periodically updated and reviewed, with selection criteria based on knowledge of the distribution and abundance of the resource (national, regional and local), and trends for increase or decline in abundance and distribution.

The Fungi section of the Biological Heritage Sites Guidelines for Site Selection has not been revised since publication in 1998.

Since that time there has been growing global and national recognition of the importance of fungi rich grasslands. Sites rich in grassland fungi are scarce and threatened globally, and Britain has a high proportion of fungi rich grasslands within Europe. A number of fungi species occurring in this habitat are listed in the IUCN Global Red List of Threatened Species.

Fungi rich grasslands are now included within the suite of SSSIs (JNCC Guidelines for the Selection of Biological SSSIs, 2018) which allows for the statutory designation of a representative of the most important grassland fungi sites in England.

However, this habitat and associated suite of species is not covered by the 1998 Biological Heritage Sites guidelines.

The BHS team have been working to increase knowledge of the importance and distribution of fungi rich grasslands in Lancashire, in order to establish a meaningful threshold for selecting sites of at least County importance.

Based on this work and in liaison with Steve Hindle (grassland fungi expert at the National Trust), the North West Fungus Group, and BHS partner organisations, a BHS guideline to select fungi rich grasslands of importance in Lancashire has been written. This is presented in Appendix A.

Debbie King, Head of Environment & Climate on behalf of Jonathan Edwards, Director of Environment and Planning took a decision to approve the addition of a BHS guideline to select fungi rich grasslands of importance in Lancashire.