At Sully Show on Saturday 10 September the Community Council launched its Biodiversity Working Group. Section 6 of the Environment (Wales) Act 2016 “…requires that public authorities must seek to maintain and enhance biodiversity in the exercise of their functions.
SLCC is such an authority and the Council wish to enlist the help of residents with this process.
For more information and to become involved see below.
As many of you will be aware there is considerable interest in and government support for efforts to protect our wild-life and support its recovery from the depredations of human activity. This is not a new development. Numerous voluntary groups have been campaigning and volunteering to this end for years. Examples include the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the Woodland Trust, and more locally the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales, which has on Fort Road the Lavernock Point reserve, two thirds of which is designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI).
In Wales the Welsh Government has placed a statutory duty on public bodies (Section 6), which:
“…requires that public authorities must seek to maintain and enhance biodiversity in the exercise of their functions…”
Public bodies of course includes SLCC, and like most of our peers we’re coming to this cold. On the Council we’re pretty sure that residents will be supportive of anything that enhances the biodiversity of where we live, but rather than simply restrict this to the exercise of our functions, e.g. how do we cut the grass on the bowling green, we believe that with help from the community we can do much more.
There is help for this through a network of support organisations; the Vale’s Local Nature Partnership (LNP), the Green Hub of town and community councils, and we hope to get the LNP to help us survey potential sites in Sully in October. To that end we need to identify sites for them to visit and advise on what might be done. We need to let them know by the end of September, so please email site suggestions to sullycouncil@btconnect.com.
If you would like to become more closely involved with the process we are forming a Biodiversity Working Group which, once the survey is complete, will pick up on the emerging ideas and take them forward. Under data protection laws you will need to complete a consent form allowing us to communicate with you. Please return this by email or you can drop it into Jubilee Hall.
We hope that many of you will join us in taking this initiative forward for the benefit of our wildlife, our environment, and the future of our community.
Cllr Robin Lynn
10 September 2022