Nature Conservation. Peter Marren

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      Headquarters: Northminster House, Peterborough PE1 1UA.

      Vision: ‘To sustain and enrich the wildlife and natural features of England for everyone’.

      Slogan: ‘Working today for nature tomorrow’.

      English Nature began its corporate life on 2 April 1991 (April Fool’s Day was a public holiday that year) with a budget of £32 million to manage 141 National Nature Reserves, administer 3,500 SSSIs and pay the salaries of 724 permanent staff. Most of the latter were inherited from the NCC, including a disproportionate number of scientific administrators, and only 90 were new appointments. EN’s Council was, as before, appointed on the basis of individual expertise, and intended to produce a balance of expertise across the range of its functions. However, they were now paid a modest salary and given specific jobs to do. From 1996, under the new rules established by the Nolan Report, new Council posts were advertised. All of them had to be approved by the chairman, a political appointee. What was noticeable about EN’s first Council was that only one was a reputable scientist. None were prominently affiliated to a voluntary body, nor could any of them be described as even remotely radical. This Council was less grand than the NCC’s: fewer big landowners, no wildlife celebrities, and no MPs. In 1995, at the request of Lord Cranbrook, EN’s chief executive, Derek Langslow, became a full member, unlike his predecessors who just sat in on meetings and spoke when required. This made him a powerful figure in English Nature’s affairs.

      English Nature inherited the structure of the NCC, with its various administrative branches, regional offices and headquarters in Peterborough. Externally the change from NCC to English Nature was brought about simply by taking down one sign and erecting another. An agency designed to serve Great Britain could, with a little readjustment, easily be scaled down to England alone. English Nature could, if it wished, carry on with business as usual. Even its official title remained the Nature Conservancy Council (for England); the name ‘English Nature’ was only legalised in 2000.

      In the event, it opted for a radical administrative shakedown. The new administration was keen to present a more businesslike face to the world with a strategic approach in which aims would be related to ‘visions’ and goals, and tied to performance indicators monitored in successive corporate plans. A deliberate attempt was made to break down the NCC’s hermetic regions and branches into ‘teams’, each with their own budget and business plan. At Northminster House, partition walls were removed, and the warren of tiny offices replaced by big open plan rooms in which scientists, technicians and administrators worked cheek byjowl. There were also significant semantic changes. English Nature saw landowners and voluntary bodies as its ‘customers’; its work as a ‘service’ – one of its motto-like phrases was that ‘People’s needs should be discovered and used as a guide to the service provided’. Its predecessors had considered themselves to be a wildlife service. English Nature was overjoyed to receive one of John Major’s Citizen Charter marks for good customer service. Henceforward English Nature’s publications bore the mark like a medal.