Quaternary Sites for Planners in Norfolk

Norfolk is a county rich in Quaternary sites. It has no less that 41 SSSIs designated primarily for their Quaternary interest (making 39% of the regional total) and also has a wealth of sites outside the SSSI system which also deserve consideration by planners as County Geodiversity Sites (CGS).

Since 2008, the Norfolk Geodiversity Partnership has audited these secondary sites and has identified a shortlist of 397 candidate CGS, of which 303 have primary features of Quaternary interest. The eventual aim is to designate as many CGS as possible. An essential interim step is to transfer spatial information about these sites onto the County Council’s GIS system.

We have secured a grant from the QRA Geoconservation Fund to ensure that shortlist of 124 key Quaternary sites are transferred into GIS format. In some cases some ground-truthing survey work will be needed to check putative site boundaries, and we hope this will provide an opportunity for volunteer Quaternary specialists to do a little field work to help the project. Once completed the GIS layer and associated database information will be supplied to local planning authorities, with May 2019 as the absolute deadline.

For further information please contact Tim Holt-Wilson via the 'Contact Us' page.