Legislation and Policy

All management plans must contain a section on legislation and policy: together they provide the foundations that support the plan and act as a guide to the direction that the process should follow. This chapter outlines the significance of legislation to planning and uses examples to demonstrate some of the main areas of influence. The management of all sites will be influenced to some extent by legislation. On statutory conservation sites management may be governed almost entirely by legislation. Non-statutory sites do not escape the implications of legislation: there is a sometimes bewildering range of national and local laws, all requiring compliance. There is little purpose in spending any time discussing the failings, or otherwise, of legislation in a management plan. If there are issues these are probably best resolved elsewhere.

Policies, or more specifically organisational policies, are a high-level statement of the purposes of an organisation (why it exists). These policies will lead to an expression of their intentions, or a course of actions that they have adopted or proposed. The policies may have been adopted voluntarily, imposed by legislation, or they may be a combination of both. At best, they provide an operational guide for an organisation, although sometimes, and usually in less enlightened organisations, they are imposed as a set of incontrovertible rules.

Keywords European legislation, international legislation, national legislation, policies, site designation, species legislation, wildlife legislation