3
Accepted
Make Natural Capital Assessment Programme more ambitious, collecting detailed, granular soil data.
Conclusion
The soil health baseline will not be established until 2028 and determining trends from that data will potentially take longer still. Given the importance of soil health, we feel it is essential to take steps now to use existing soil data and identify priority areas of concern. Furthermore, unlike the Minister, we believe that comparing soil data is helpful at an individual farm level and that this data is vital for assessing the impact of ELMs. The Government’s Natural Capital and Ecosystem Assessment Programme should therefore be more ambitious and aim to collect more detailed, granular data to support land managers and inform future policy development. ELMs—as well as benefitting from more thorough data—could also be an effective mechanism for funding, standardising and collecting such field-level data. We are not convinced that guidance alone will be enough to sufficiently standardise soil tests and assessments around agreed metrics. However, this must be done in such a way to alleviate privacy concerns and avoid additional administrative burdens.
Government Response Summary
The government highlighted ongoing efforts through the tNCEA programme, including projects like the England Ecosystem Survey and England Peat Map, and the Environment Agency's Big Soil Stocktake launched in November 2023, which aim to collect comprehensive soil data and inform policy, but did not commit to more ambitious granular data collection or funding via ELMs.
Paragraph Reference
24
Government Response
Accepted
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
Analysing existing soil health data is valuable but concerns about data quality and standardization require careful consideration. The tNCEA combines two approaches that together provide a holistic and joined-up view of our natural environment, enabling us to identify connections, dependencies, and trade-offs between policy ambitions and to make better-informed decisions that benefit people and nature. As part of this, up-to- date and comprehensive soils data is a priority of the programme and being measured through projects such as the strategically sampled England Ecosystem Survey and the England Peat Map. The data, evidence-based insight and understanding that tNCEA will deliver will inform ambitious, proactive, and sustainable policy decisions to support the government’s goal to improve the state of the environment within a generation. The Environment Agency launched the Big Soil Stocktake in November 2023, to encourage data transparency and accessibility on soil data across all sectors. The Environment Agency continue to work with Defra, Natural England, and others to achieve this. Soils strategy and leadership
Timeline
Recommendation age
2.5 yrs
Report published
05 Dec 2023