Marine Planning Stakeholder Reference Group meeting: 1 July 2025

Eluned Jones (Chair, Welsh Government), Elen King, Megan Nicholas, Rhys Davies, Hishiv Shah and Morgan Commins (Welsh Government), Helen Bloomfield, Katherine Griffith, Maggie Hatton-Ellis, Karen Perrow, Lucie Skates (Natural Resources Wales), Poppy Phillips (Marine Management Organisation), Jean-Francois Dulong (Welsh Local Government Association), Alex Curd (Marine Conservation Society), Shaun Gaffey (RSPB), Jennifer Godwin (Seabed User & Developer Group), Chrissie Ingle (Severn Estuary Partnership), Claire Stephenson (Associated British Ports), Julian Whitewright (Royal Commission on Ancient and Historic Monuments), Cloe Evans (Royal Yachting Association), John Wrottesley (European Subsea Cables Association), Nick Salter, Helen Croxson (Maritime and Coastguard Agency), Olivia Ross, Richard Shelmerdine (JNCC), Rosie Kelly, Tristan Bromley (The Crown Estate)

Chair, Welsh Government

Eluned welcomed new members and guests to the Marine Planning Stakeholder Reference Group (MPSRG) and initiated a round table of introductions. 

Elen King, Welsh Government

Elen outlined that Welsh Government have been working with the UK Government on compensation requirements in relation to offshore wind. This includes the Offshore Wind Environmental Improvement Package, which will introduce the Marine Recovery Fund and Offshore Wind Environmental Standards. 

She highlighted that the consultation on the Marine Recovery Fund has recently closed. In Wales, the Marine Recovery Fund may relate to Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects in the offshore region and offshore wind developments over 350 megawatts in the inshore region. Any development sited in the inshore region which would typically be consented by Welsh Ministers can also pay into the Marine Recovery Fund. Elen stated that Welsh Government is currently awaiting information on the consultation outcomes but have agreed with Defra that developers in Wales can choose to access the Marine Recovery Fund.

Elen also raised that Welsh Government have been working with the UK Government on a library of compensation measures, which will complement the Marine Recovery Fund. 

Defra are also intending to consult on environmental assessments during the summer of 2025.

Eluned Jones, Welsh Government 

Eluned provided some background on the Independent Review of Marine Planning Approaches, which concluded in Spring 2025. Progressed with input from stakeholders, the Review considered options for building on and further developing the marine planning framework to provide greater spatial direction and balance Net Zero ambitions with environmental enhancement. 

Eluned noted that the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs issued a Written Statement on the findings of the Independent Review on 17 June. A report summarising the findings of the Review has been published on the Welsh Government website. The report concludes that the Welsh National Marine Plan is broadly fit for purpose and makes constructive suggestions on how Welsh Government can build upon the marine planning framework.

Eluned provided an overview of key themes and recommendations which emerged from the Independent Review and actions which Welsh Government are taking forward to progress these recommendations.  These include a Spatial Assessment of Welsh Seas, a Scoping Study to Explore Marine Net Benefit, a Technical Statement providing guidance on Welsh National Marine Plan policy ENV_01: Resilient Marine Ecosystems, and considering approaches to introduce further Strategic Resource Areas. 

Hishiv Shah, Welsh Government 

Hishiv provided an overview and demonstration of the Wales Marine Planning Portal. 

Hishiv then invited members of the MPSRG to ask questions or provide feedback on the Marine Planning Portal. 

Stakeholders noted that: 

• it is helpful that Marine Planning Portal datasets are not limited to the Welsh marine plan area, but extend beyond
• the interface of the Marine Planning Portal is easier to navigate than DataMapWales;
• socioeconomic data from coastal typology reports could be represented on the Portal
• inclusion of SMPs could be more detailed

Hishiv thanked everybody for their feedback and noted that he would review the suggestions.

Megan Nicholas, Welsh Government

Megan provided a brief update on the Technical Statement, which has been developed to support the implementation of Welsh National Marine Plan policy, ENV_01: Resilient Marine Ecosystems. 

Megan thanked stakeholders for their input into the development of the Technical Statement. She noted that the document is now being prepared for publication and hopes that the final version will be available in autumn 2025. 

Megan also updated on the forthcoming scoping study to explore marine net benefit. She reiterated that the scoping study does not represent any commitment to introduce related policy in Wales, but instead will explore potential approaches to, and the feasibility of, marine net benefit in a Welsh context. It is anticipated that the contract for the study will commence in August 2025, and will end in spring 2026. 

Megan highlighted that stakeholders will be provided with the opportunity to input into the study, with stakeholder views contributing towards the study’s recommendations. 

Helen Bloomfield, Maggie-Hatton Ellis, Katherine Griffith, Natural Resources Wales

Helen introduced this item, explaining that Natural Resources Wales are exploring opportunities to deliver ecosystem enhancement and hope to develop evidence to inform related action. This evidence will need to be open access, easy to interrogate, and easy to update.

Helen noted that NRW want to build a consensus on key opportunities and shared priorities for ecosystem enhancement. She clarified that ‘enhancement’ is an umbrella term which captures species recovery, restoration, creation, introduction, and evidence.

This mapping will be progressed as an iterative process, with the hope of refining from potential areas of opportunity for ecosystem enhancement, to those which are feasible, and ultimately to areas of focus. 

Helen discussed the Marine Priority Ecological Network (mPEN) of this work, which focuses on the MPA network as the cornerstone of resilience in Welsh waters. The mPEN highlights where action is needed to deliver measures to restore features, reduce pressures to enable recovery, or to develop evidence to support effective management.  The Marine Priority Ecological Network is about to be updated with the new condition assessment outputs from the recently completed NRW Improving Marine Conservation Advice (IMCA) Project. 

Maggie provided further detail on IMCA, outlining that eighty-five feature condition assessments have been carried out across seventeen sites under the IMCA project. NRW conducted internal workshops to assess habitats, species, and Special Protection Areas (SPAs). 

NRW have produced forty reports under IMCA, including six new Special Areas of Conservation advice packages for marine SPAs, twelve feature level condition assessments, and eight site level marine SPA condition assessments. All reports are searchable on the NRW website.

Maggie noted that it is difficult to map the multiple reasons which cause a site to be in unfavourable condition. 

Maggie outlined that, in total, twelve new marine conservation advice packages have been produced (covering both SPAs and SACs). The new packages differ from those existing as they contain simplified legal sections, targeted objectives, key supporting information to achieve objectives, simplified advice on operations, and explore climate change vulnerability and coastal squeeze.

Before introducing Katherine, Maggie noted that the IMCA work is ongoing and will progress over the next five years. It will explore cross border condition assessments and result in complete conservation advice packages for related sites.

As NRW’s final speaker, Katherine provided an overview of a planned contract, being progressed in partnership with The Crown Estate, which will develop evidence around the potential and feasible opportunities for enhancing Section 7 and OSPAR habitats and species (in line with the iterative mapping process that Helen previously presented). 

This contract will update work previously undertaken in 2016 to identify and prioritise the habitats and species most suitable for enhancement actions/projects. To update the work, NRW will conduct an evidence review- ensuring any new methods and examples of successes/failures are included. Using the outputs of the evidence review, they will then work with stakeholders to build consensus around which habitats and species are a priority for enhancement in Wales. 

Katherine described how the work will also develop methodology to progress mapping “potential” opportunities into “feasible” opportunities by considering factors that could affect the success of enhancement actions. This includes identifying and applying 1) habitat constraints (so that enhancement of one habitat or species is not to the detriment of another protected habitat/species) and 2) hard and soft constraints (to remove areas where enhancement may not be compatible due to existing uses or activities). The methodology will be applied to the current seagrass and native oyster potential maps as a pilot and will act a template for any subsequent habitat or species layers that are developed. 

Further work beyond the scope of this contract will be required to identify/map the areas of focus. 

All 

There was no other business. Eluned thanked members for attending and for engaging in the meeting. 

Meeting end.