Creating a Community Nature Recovery Plan
Overview
Creating a Community Nature Recovery Plan (CNRP) allows your Local Council to analyse, plan and execute improvements to biodiversity and nature in your local area. This is in line with the Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS) published in December 2025 that has the ambition of:
- increasing the land area that is managed for nature,
- increasing tree canopy cover, and,
- increasing the number of wildlife-rich habitats.
Some Local Authorities also have targets, such as in Cambridgeshire, to ensure that there is a local green space within 300 metres of every resident.
You can refer to your Local Authority for specific guidance and targets. You can also see the LNRS boundary areas to see which area you are in. You can find this layer by logging into Parish Online Mapping and open the "Natural England - Administrative Areas" collection.
Parish Online Mapping includes specific tools and datasets to make it easy for your Local Council to make a start on your plan and visualise your local area. We appreciate that a Local Council may not have all the skills required to build up a plan themselves. That's not a problem, as you can call upon residents, ecologists and local nature enthusiasts to help with this work. They can use your Parish Online Mapping account as a subcontractor, thus turbocharging your effort for nature recovery.
What is a Community Nature Recovery Plan?
A CNRP is a living document/map that;
- highlights areas for concern for nature, or areas for improvement,
- draws out areas of potential, ongoing or completed nature improvement projects,
- highlights land that is actively being managed for nature, or has the potential to with engaged landowners.
Your CNRP should be unique to your local area, taking into account your geography, your urban/rural make-up, and the wants and needs of your residents. These plans should be "ground-up" rather than dictated.
Why do a Community Nature Recovery Plan?
A better natural environment equates to a better place for your residents and visitors to live and work. Your council should always be striving to help make biodiversity stronger, so a dedicated set of map layers that represent your nature recovery activities is great for communication and planning. Using the mapping also helps you focus on what's important and take into account the constraints in your area. With better understanding and planning, the time and money you invest in projects will see a greater return.
How much does a CNRP cost?
This largely depends on how many projects your council wants to undertake. However, it may be that you can find funding for projects, e.g. purchasing saplings for planting, from a variety of established organisations.
When drawing out possible project areas, you can enter the estimate of cost and timescales so you have more information when it comes to applying for grants.
Check with your Local Authority to see what channels of funding are available.
A collaborative approach
The natural world is not aware of your parish council boundary, so your efforts should take into account the work of neighbouring councils and join it up as best possible.
That's why the map layers we've created in Parish Online are "collaborative". This means that when you plot your information on the map, other councils can see it. And likewise, what they plot can be seen by you. This is important to ensure projects are considered in a joined up way. Don't worry, they can't edit the information you draw in, and you can't accidentally delete their information.
With that in mind, it's advised not to enter personal details into the drawn areas. For example, when plotting landowner engagement you might want to leave out any contact details or names, favouring storing these in a separate document.
Step-by-step Guide
This sets out a step-by-step plan for bringing together your Community Nature Recovery Plan.
1. Establish a local working group
Your Local Council is the perfect organisation to bind together the enthusiasm of individuals and groups in your local area. You may already have;
- a council-run biodiversity group,
- a local Climate and Nature Network (CAN) volunteer group,
- a local ecology group,
- enthusiastic individuals with a care for nature and relevant skills.
If you don't have any of these, arranging a meeting in the village hall or pub is a great way to start. Advertise it to your residents and you'll be amazed at the response. It's a great way to get a group of people together in an informal setting and provoke some conversation.
Top tip: Print off some maps of the parish that you can distribute at the meeting.
During the meeting, attendees might want to draw on the map any concerns they have for nature in the area, or highlight areas that could be improved. Collect these and use them in step 3 onwards.
Make sure you have someone taking notes (you don't have to do formal minutes), just to jot down the ideas and concerns that come up. This will help in the later steps.
2. Review existing plans / policies
You may find that you're not starting from scratch with this project. Have a look at previous work of the council;
- Look back at your Neighbourhood Plan (if your council has one) as that will almost certainly have some analysis on biodiversity.
- Your council may also have declared a climate emergency, which will usually mean a climate action plan has been created, which will include nature recovery elements.
- Check your council policies to see if there are points on nature and biodiversity.
This will give you some structure to your group. If you don't have anything, take a look at neighbouring parishes as they may have policies and guidance you can "borrow" and adapt.
3. Plot your areas of concern on the map
A good first step is to plot on a map the concerns that your group have identified. To do this, log into Parish Online Mapping;
- In the left-hand panel, scroll down to the "Community Nature Recovery Plans" collection.
- Click on it to expand it to reveal the map layers in it. These are editable layers you can draw in.
- Click on the "Concerns for nature" layer (clicking on the title)
- Hover over the tick, click the cog, then click Add Feature
- Click on the map where the concern is
- Enter information about that concern in the left-hand panel
- Click Save
4. Browse existing map data
Within Parish Online Mapping there are hundreds of read-only map datasets you can browse. This can help your group understand the types of designations and constraints in your area.
You will find data from:
- Friends of the Earth
- Historic England
- DEFRA
- Natural England
- Environment Agency
- British Geological Survey
and much more. Getting to know what's in Parish Online means you can refer back to it when needed.
5. Plot past, present and future projects on the map
How you have identified the things of concern in your area, and the existing make-up of your area, you can start to plot out the improvement projects that you'd like to tackle. You can also plot existing ones you've done.
To do this, go back to the CNRP collection in Parish Online Mapping;
- Turn on the Nature Recovery Projects layer
- Hover over the tick, click the cog, then click Add Feature
- Draw around the perimeter of the field or area where your project is
- Complete the area by clicking back on the first point you drew
- Fill in the details in the left-hand panel as best you can
- Click Save
Top tip: if your project area is the same as a Land Registry Cadastral Parcel boundary, you can click it and select the Copy to Another Layer option. This means you don't have to draw it out manually.
Drawing it out manually
Using the feature copy method
6. Plot engaged landowners on the map
This next step usually works in parallel with the previous one. Sometimes you know the area you want work done on, and sometimes you have a landowner who wants to help but there's no specific action for their land yet.
Finding land for nature improvement is often difficult, so by plotting all the landowners who are engaged in your project, you'll be able to find some quick wins. Landowners don't have to mean farmers with large areas of land. You can draw out areas as big or small as you like, so it could be a individual residents offering up parts of their garden for nature improvements. Every little helps!
To do this in Parish Online Mapping, follow the exact same steps as the previous section, but use the Engaged Landowners layer instead.
7. Review, Execute and Iterate
Now you have a great looking map (beauty is in the eye of the beholder) which may have just a handful of items on it, or it might be jam-packed with ideas. Either way you've now got a map where you can start picking off the projects you want to do. This is the more complex part as getting funding and boots on the ground is never easy. But because you have the support of people attending your initial meetings you're more likely to get people involved and chip in their time. Remember, rewarding them with cake is highly recommended for a long, successful nature and biodiversity group!
The map is a living document. As you complete a project, update the information for that project area (click it on the map and click the pencil icon to edit).
Inspiration
As more areas are identified you'll build up a better picture of how you can strategically improve biodiversity and improve nature. Remember to refer back to the other maps in Parish Online for inspiration. e.g.
- When looking at the Tree Canopy Map, are there sections of tree planting that will help foster nature corridors through our town or village?
- Referring to the Woodland Opportunity Map that shows land conducive to tree planting, which areas have engaged landowners already?
- Where could there be tree planting to help alleviate surface water or river flooding?
- Which concerns for nature are withing ancient woodland, and how could these be remedied?
- Can we start a bird box installation campaign using bird box designs that favour certain species?
Feedback
We'd love to hear how you get on with your Community Nature Recovery Plan and Parish Online Mapping. Are there things you'd like to add that is currently missing in the CNRP collection? Are there datasets you'd like from your Local Authority to help with your decision making? Get in touch and we can help.
Credits
This guidance is based on work produced by the Cambridgeshire County Council Community Nature team.
Related Articles
Creating your Neighbourhood Plan
Overview We know how important Neighbourhood Plans are to a Local Council, and we know how much better they are when maps are included during the drafting and consultation phases. That's why we've taken learning from user feedback and neighbourhood ...Can I include sections for local community groups that aren't run by the Local Council?
Yes you can. It's important that your Local Council website is the hub for your residents finding local information, groups they can join and events they can attend. Pages for Community Groups can be created and added to the Services menu. This ...Creating a digital asset register
Video Compatible Product Parish Online Overview Your Parish Online account can be used to store your digital asset register. This register is required by insurance companies to ensure you have the correct cover and items are valued at the right ...Creating Users
Overview Creating user accounts allows your colleagues to log in and view mapping information without giving them your own login details. There are four privilege levels for users: Reader Editor Data Manager Administrator View Map Layers X X X X ...Creating Content Pages
What are Content Pages? Pages are where you can store information for things like: Community Groups Transparency Documents Services and much more. Content Pages are designed to be placed in the list under Transparency or Services. This means it'll be ...