The Solent Forum
Working in partnership for the future
The Solent Forum offers project consultancy services to Solent Forum members to help facilitate work on coastal and marine issues in the Solent. We mostly work in partnership with other bodies to deliver this work, helping specifically with stakeholder engagement, event planning and legacy support. Please enquire if you would like to discuss how we can help you.
We worked with Natural England and the Marine Biological Association to raise awareness of marine invasives in the Solent and the biosecurity actions and measures that can be taken to help prevent their arrival and spread.
We are working with the University of Portsmouth to develop an inventory of Seascape restoration activity across the Solent and Sussex Bay area.
We are working with responsible authorities across the Solent to help build in marine nature recovery into the emerging Local Nature Recovery Strategies.
We are supporting and assisting with Blue Marine's work on seascape wide habitat restoration across the Solent.
On behalf of the Solent's Relevant Authorities we deliver the Solent Marine Sites annual scheme of management which review seventeen non-licensable activities in the Solent.
On behalf of the Environment Agency, the Solent Forum consulted with Southampton Water stakeholders, to get their view on how we could potentially develop mitigation measures for coastal structures mapped by the Agency and review some of the opportunities and barriers. View the Opportunity Mapping work.
The Forum was contracted by the Environment Agency to help it to publicise and promote the use of ecological enhancements in hard coastal defences. This work was completed at the end of March 2018. It includes an online resource bank of knowledge on the Forum’s website, and additional information added to the Solent Information Database and Coastal Consents guide.
The Marine Management Organisation (MMO) has contracted the Forum to assist it with its ESE Project, funded by the EMFF. The Forum has been identifying hard to reach stakeholders to help the MMO ensure wider stakeholder involvement in marine planning. This work ran from 2017 to 2019. One of the outputs was a video on the south marine plans.
The Forum (with its neighbouring coastal fora in Dorset and Devon) worked with the MMO to deliver and chair a range of workshops to develop and support the preparation of south marine plans. This facilitated extensive input from a wide range of coastal organisations around the Solent and the Isle of Wight to help shape the first South Marine Plans. The Forum also supports the MMO Licensing Team by publicising marine licence applications in its monthly e-newsletter. It also worked with the Licensing Team on its popular Coastal Consents Guide that shows developers what to consider when planning development proposals.
Solent Forum+44 (0) 370 779 5206
solentforum@hants.gov.uk
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