Get involved

Landowners and farmers

You manage most of the county, so you can change most of the outcome. The strategy is advisory — it places no obligation on you — but it does tell you which measures are considered priorities on your ground, which is increasingly what funding schemes ask about.

A good first step is to look at where your land sits on the Local Habitat Map and which priorities apply there. If you would rather talk it through with someone first, or you want help working out which funding route fits what you are already doing, get in touch — we can point you to the right adviser.

For grants, Berkshire Community Foundation runs several funds for local projects, including a small, rolling fund for quick, flexible support. Fund sizes and windows change through the year, so check what is currently open rather than relying on a figure quoted here.

Councils and public bodies

Public authorities have a duty to have regard to the strategy. The practical questions are usually about how: how it sits alongside local plan policy, how it interacts with Biodiversity Net Gain decisions, how to use it when managing the authority's own estate, and how to report against it.

The partnership exists partly to stop six councils solving the same problem six times. If you are working on any of the above, tell us — the answer may already exist.

Businesses

Business land in Berkshire — campuses, car parks, verges, watercourse frontage — adds up to a surprising amount of the county, much of it in exactly the built-up places where habitat is scarcest. Small changes at that scale are not tokenistic. Businesses are also a route to funding, skills and volunteer time.

Community groups and parish councils

Local groups do a great deal of Berkshire's practical conservation work and most of its recording. If your group is managing a site, planting, surveying or campaigning, the strategy gives you something to point at: an agreed, evidenced statement of what this county needs, and where.

Residents

Two things genuinely help. The first is recording what you see — biological records submitted to the Thames Valley Environmental Records Centre are what the strategy's evidence base is built from, and gaps in the record are gaps in the plan. The second is your garden, street and local greenspace: in the urban parts of Berkshire these are the habitat.

If you want the wider context before deciding where to start, the guided map story has a route written for residents.