The Swale Business Awards is about highlighting businesses of all shapes and sizes throughout the borough. Our next organisation may be small but they have been offering a service that is unique in Kent for the last fifteen years!
Led by Dr Hannah Cook, the Kent and Medway Biological Records Centre supplies reports on the wildlife species and habitats found within the immediate area surrounding any proposed building and infrastructure developments. The reports enable a better understanding of the potential environmental impact of any proposed works and then that information can be used to make informed decisions as to the most appropriate way to deliver those developments whilst ensuring the conservation, protection and where necessary mitigation works necessary to protect the surrounding area.
Dr Cook discussed the challenges that her organisation faced: “Our target market is always going to be within the housing and infrastructure services sectors and although we already work with many such companies there are still a shockingly high number of works that go ahead without proper checks on the potential environmental impact being carried out. Our aim is to raise awareness of the implications that such activities can have on wildlife and habitats so that there is more consideration paid to managing the environmental issues surrounding any new development in advance rather than facing an uphill struggle to restore damaged habitats after an incident has occurred.”
The Kent and Medway Biological Records Centre is a non-for-profit organisation so any income over and above that needed to cover staff salaries, rent and utility bills is then fed into their charitable services. Data provision for conservation, research and general interest purposes is normally supplied free of any charge. This can include data supply to other conservation charities to help deliver their aims, helping to support high level academic research, providing bespoke mapping services to enable local conservation groups to better understand what wildlife they might be able to see in a local green space or visiting a school to suggest how they could create a wildlife area in their grounds.
Dr Cook discussed why she felt that her organisation should be recognised at the 2018 Swale Business Awards: “I would like to see Kent and Medway Biological Records Centre win an award to not only to recognise the tremendous work that the small team here deliver everyday to provide a huge range of services to everyone from a local resident wanting to find out more about the wildlife in their garden through to national organisations delivering government level advice; but also to raise the profile of the charity as much as possible as our future success relies on us continuing to engage with our local community in order keep growing our wildlife records database. It is through the public reporting their sightings to us that we can then deliver all of the work we do that enables us to protect those species and habitats effectively for future generations.”
Kent and Medway Biological Records Centre
Brogdale Farm Office
Brogdale Farm, Brogdale Road
Faversham
Kent
ME13 8XZ
07817 332264
www.kmbrc.org.uk