ON January 7 Oxford City Council opened a consultation on its Draft Corporate Biodiversity Strategy which, it says, will help to “gauge the level of interest and concern about biodiversity in Oxford”.

As the city council points out on its own website – oxford.gov.uk/Page Render/ decEH/Biodiversity.htm – biodiversity is central to the natural processes that we all benefit from, such as food and fuel production, maintenance of air, soil and water quality and the regulation of climate and flooding.

It is so important that under Section 40 of the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006 “every public authority must, in exercising its functions, have regard, so far as is consistent with the proper exercise of those functions, to the purpose of conserving biodiversity”.

So why does the city council allow us just four weeks to respond to this consultation? Ten weeks were allowed for people to respond to the Christmas Light Festival 2014! consultation.

Responses to the biodiversity consultation can be submitted via the city council’s website at http://consultation.oxford.gov.uk/ consult.ti/CBS2015/

Dr Judith A Webb, Blenheim Road, Kidlington

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