Episode Four: Creating the Green Corridor
How to Build a Railway is a twelve-part podcast series exploring the story behind the construction of the UK’s new high speed rail line.
As the largest single environmental project in the UK, protecting and enhancing the environment has always been an integral part of the HS2 programme. Since 2009, every metre of the design has been carefully considered in navigating sites of natural significance.
Episode four, ‘Creating the Green Corridor’, explores our endeavours to protect, replace and improve the green spaces that will run alongside the railway – creating the equivalent of 23 new Hyde Parks lining the spine of the country.
We have already started planting new woodlands and creating new wetlands, grasslands and meadows which are already thriving homes for wildlife.
Featuring
Featuring Kathleen Covill, Natural England’s Principal Advisor, Simon Mackrell, director at Thomson Environmental Consultants and HS2’s David Prys-Jones and Kat Stanhope, we learn about the opportunities to minimise the environmental impact throughout the construction and operation of HS2 and how we’re creating new ecological sites for protected species.
Episode Four – Creating the Green Corridor (transcript)
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Episode transcript
This is a transcript of episode four of HS2’s How to build a railway podcast, first published on 21 March 2023.
Fran Scott: I’m Fran Scott and this is How to Build a Railway.
This episode we’re getting green fingers as we explore HS2’s Green Corridor.
As you heard in episode one, the HS2 route was carefully considered and every metre was agonised over.
One of the major considerations was avoiding sites of natural significance. The route was moved and tunnels were constructed to reduce HS2’s impact on the countryside.
Once the route was finalised, the next job was to set a plan to protect, replace and improve on any green spaces that remain on the rail path. And that work has meant planting millions of trees, developing hundreds of new wildlife habitats, and a commitment to no net loss of biodiversity across the project, with an ambition of net gains in certain sections.
1.16
Kat Stanhope: This is an environmental project that just happens to have a railway running through the middle of it.
Fran Scott: And to achieve those goals they have established the Green Corridor, the largest environmental project in the UK.
1.38
David Prys-Jones: It’s an initiative that we launched a couple of years ago that’s really got two parallel aims. So firstly, there’s minimising the compensating for the impacts of the scheme. So that’s dealing with all the things we need to through the act through the regulations, etc. And then secondly, there’s the support to the local environmental projects, local communities looking wider than our railway boundary.
Fran Scott: David Prys Jones is the Biodiversity Manager at HS2. The first step for the HS2 ecological team was to work with Natural England to look at the route.
Natural England’s job is to advise and regulate big projects so that impacts on nature are avoided, or mitigated or compensated. They also work with infrastructure projects like HS2 to help maximise opportunities for enhancing nature. Natural England has been advising on HS2 since all the way back to 2008.
2.35
Kathleen Covill: So from very early on, we were consulted on the appraisal of sustainability for the project. And that’s when they were still looking at root options and alignment.
We worked with HS2 early on to look at the impact on triple ‘SI’s’.
Fran Scott: Kathleen Covill is the principal advisor at Natural England for HS2 and Triple SI stands for sites of specific scientific interest.
3.02
Kathleen Covill: …and for phase one of the project, they were originally thinking that they might impact on three triple SI’s, but in discussions with us, we were able to talk to them about removing one of those sites from the project. And they were looking at an access route for that site. And were able to reroute that. And so they’ve moved away, and they just avoided that impact altogether on that protected site.
Fran Scott: One way HS2 avoids impacting the environment is through tunnels and over 35 miles of phase one is in a tunnel and that protects areas of natural beauty and hectares of ancient woodland. But of course, building tunnels or changing the alignment of the route is not always an option because high speed rail needs to run on the straightest and flattest route possible. Importantly, though, there are lots of other mitigation efforts that can and are being used to reduce the impact.
4.04
Kathleen Covill: So if they can’t be avoided, then you’re starting to look at are there mitigating actions you can put in place? Could you do the works at a particular time of year or through a particular kind of methodology of construction? That means you reduce that impact.
So for example, if another developer was working within a woodland, you know, how can they change the design of the project to take as little woodland out as possible and to protect what’s there.
Fran Scott: This is important ongoing work for HS2 and its contractors.
4.39
Kat Stanhope: It’s heavily influenced by the contractors looking at the design and designing the scheme, how they will construct it, but also where the footprint of the scheme is going to be to avoid things like ancient woodland, you know, a key one of the receptors, and that might be making gradients steeper, you know, tying back the land that they need, taking that little bit less land for an access track. And all of that can make a real difference
And that’s still going on phase one, our contracts are still designing parts of the scheme to really reduce those impacts.
Fran Scott: Kat Stanhope is the ecology lead at HS2.
Kat and David’s work has focussed on reducing the amount of ancient woodland impacted by the project. So far this has saved hectares of woodland previously expected to be lost.
5.31
David Prys Jones: We reported originally, in terms of the environmental statement that we were going to lose, I think it was around 29 hectares of ancient woodland. Since that point of design, we have reduced that number by about 20% as of the most recent numbers, and we’re continuing to reduce it.
Fran Scott: That extra mitigation work done with contractors to use up as little land as possible during works saved 5.7 hectares of woodland.
The ecology team at HS2 aren’t just focussed on mitigating the amount of woodland being lost, they are also working to try and replace it.
Across Phase One, 7 million trees and shrubs are being planted and there are also schemes like the Woodland Fund available to further support this.
6.30
David Prys Jones: So that’s a 5 million pound fund that was set up specifically to support the creation of native woodland and the restoration of ancient woodland within a 25 mile zone surrounding the railway. So that was set up in response to the impact that we have on ancient woodlands, which are obviously irreplaceable habitats, and we are continuing to reduce our impacts on them. But in recognition of the impact, we set up this 5 million pound fund. And that’s for phase one, we’ve got a 2 million pound fund now established for phase two a, the 5 million pound woodland fund has been in operation for a number of years now. And at the last count, we’ve supported 30 Plus projects, we spent about 1.5 million pounds of it.
Fran Scott: Through the woodland fund 130 hectares of new woodland has already been planted. That’s over 300,000 trees. In addition, over 60 hectares of ancient woodland has been restored back to a good condition.
The woodland fund is administered by the forestry commission and anyone with land within 25 miles of the HS2 route can apply for funds to create new woodlands or restore existing ones.
7.51
David Prys Jones: Then it’s also got to be linked ideally to an existing ancient woodland, maybe an extension of ancient woodland, as I say restore existing woodlands and that’s a unique offering that there is funds and provides which other woodland creation funds in the UK doesn’t.
So we provide the costs for doing all the works. And we also provide costs for 10 years worth of management and maintenance and monitoring. So they are managed for that period over that period, we’ll have an officer woodland officer go out from the Forestry Commission to look at each of those sites and just check that they are achieving the conditions that they need to. So we provide that it’s not just about creating, it’s about making sure that it sort of achieves the targets going forward.
Fran Scott: But it is difficult for newly planted trees to replace the role ancient woodlands have on the wildlife and biodiversity, which have been around for hundreds of years.
8.47
Kat Stanhope: We say that it’s not really going to be a woodland for 25 years from being planted to when you can really it’s functioning as a woodland with the kind of ecological habitat that will support various species. But the advantage is that because we have a monitoring programme and a management programme of over a long period of time is that we are collecting data on how those sites are doing, how they can be best managed, whether we actually need to tweak some of those sites to make them have the most benefit for species and in future of public use of those sites as well.
Fran Scott: One way the HS2 ecology team is hoping to boost the growth of new woodland is by moving the soil from ancient woodlands to the new woodland areas.
9.18
Kat Stanhope: The ancient woodlands, they’ve been there for a period of time that they’re defined as ancient. They’ve been there since 1600. And they’ve had a cover of woodland for that time. So over that time, the soil builds up a particular biota, microbes and fungi in all the kind of the seedbank of the soil.
9.38
Simon Mackrell: I think when you when you talk about ancient will look translocation, people do assume that you’re picking up large trees and translocating them. And there is a method for doing that. And people still tried to do that with specific single trees. But the failure rate of that translocation with individual trees very high.
Fran Scott: Simon Mackrell is Director of Business Operations at Thomson Environmental Consultants and they’ve been working on translocating ancient woodland for HS2.
10.11
Simon Mackrell: What we’ve tried to achieve is the translocation of the soil in its entirety, and then it’s, and then it’s horizons onto a receptor site that mirrors the same conditions of the donor site. And we very specifically remove the layers, which is the outer eyes on the organic horizon, followed by the horizon or topsole, and the B horizon sub so for simple simplicity, those are the three horizons we focus on and put that back in the exact depth and replication of area, as we’ve taken it from the donor site to the receptor site. So what you’re doing, you’re transferring the woodland soils and all the seed bank lists within it. And on all the other compositions of that site, and you’re moving it in its entirety.
And we planted you know, we did plant some saplings and trees and took some individual species over. We planted mono lifts both live and dead mono lifts for bat roofs features. And yeah, year one in that first year after translocation on the sites that we did, there was a proliferation of wildflowers and unusual species that some of those seed banks have clearly been dormant for a long time and suddenly exposed to a new condition new site new conditions they looked fantastic that really good.
Fran Scott: While Simon says the signs on the ground are promising the HS2 team are also monitoring what’s in the ground over the long term.
11.45
Kat Stanhope: And one of the tests that we have been, one of the innovations that we’ve been trialling is to do EDNA monitoring, that’s environmental DNA of the soil. And on phase one, we took samples before the soils were moved. And in future we will take different soil samples at different stages throughout the development of the habitats to see what things like bacteria are doing, what fungi are doing, and how they develop and how they have reacted to the translocation process, as well as the monitoring of the traditional know how their habitats are doing above ground.
Fran Scott: The green corridor isn’t just focused on the impact on ancient woodland. Back in 2012 HS2 made a commitment to no net loss of biodiversity from the project.
12.27
Kathleen Covill: Which at that stage was really ambitious for a project of its size with the idea that they would take a baseline of all of the habitat that they were impacting. And then they would compensate enough to make sure that there was no net loss of those habitat types when the project was constructed. But then, the discussion around biodiversity net gain, as it’s called, has really progressed since that early stage that early commitment to no net loss.
So over the last five years, really, to see if the project could move from that no net loss to making a net gain.
Fran Scott: HS2’s desire to deliver biodiversity net gain is not only very ambitious but also hugely important to UK wildlife.
13.16
Kathleen Covill: Biodiversity is declining faster at the moment than any time in human history. And particularly in the UK, we’ve got 40% of species in decline. More than 400 million birds have been lost over the last 50 years. A quarter of our mammals are threatened with extinction, including species that used to be really common, like the Hedgehog, and in the UK, it means that we’re really one of the most nature depleted nations on the planet. So for big infrastructure to, to deliver net gains in the natural environment is really essential.
Fran Scott: HS2’s plan will deliver 33 square kilometres of wildlife habitat, that’s 4600 football pitches worth, a 30% increase compared to what was there originally.
14.15
Kathleen Covill: A shift to biodiversity net gain of replaceable habitats around the route that are being impacted, would mean you’d see this really big green corridor emerging and you’d get much more opportunity to be able to connect pockets of habitat around the route connect them to that corridor as well.
Fran Scott: The first key step to achieving an aim like biodiversity net gain is understanding what you’re up against and that means doing site survey’s and for Simon’s team at Thomson Environmental that has meant doing a lot of surveying.
14.48
Simon Mackrell: It’s probably in the hundreds I don’t have that figured to hand, but it’s literally hundreds and hundreds. We started doing surveys done in the early sectors down in the Colne Valley for HS2. And since then we’ve sort of followed the whole trace all the way up to the Midlands.
Baseline surveys to map out what’s there, flora and fauna and all the species and populations.
Fran Scott: All this survey work gives you an idea about what you’re trying to replace before you move in to building new wildlife habitats.
For habitats of protected species that are being lost, as per any development project, HS2 complies with legislation and laws including obtaining the necessary protected species licences from Natural England before they can begin works on site. Activities include moving protected species to new habitats.
15.38
Kathleen Covill: So for example, bats have been a particular area where there have been a number of impacts because of where the scheme is having to take woodland down. If bats are present in that woodland, high speed 2 has to have a licence, in order to take those trees down. It means they have to work very carefully. They can only work at particular times of year. To remove trees, they have to survey the trees beforehand, make sure there are no bats present, no bat roosts present, and they can’t take any trees down during the hibernation phase, if we know that there are bats present in particular trees.
Fran Scott: But before they can remove the habitats of protected species, they must have created new habitats for them to go. And for the bats they have built bat houses.
16.29
Kat Stanhope: So traditionally, bats would roost in caves or in tree holes. But they have become integrated into lots of buildings where they will use the loft spaces or will use spaces behind bargeboards or around window lintels. So we’re basically recreating those buildings with those spaces already built in that the bats can use. And they’re part of our monitoring scheme as well. Of the nine birdhouses that were created for phase one, in the first year of monitoring, six were already being used by roosting bats.
Fran Scott: Another species that HS2 is frequently dealing with is the great crested newt. All great crested newts in the path of HS2 need to be identified and moved to new habitats before construction work can take place.
17.27
Kat Stanhope: And great crested newts will often get into around the roots of hedgerows. And they’re quite hard to get hold off if you’re an ecologist on the ground.
Fran Scott: So in 2019 HS2 funded research to see whether dogs could help out with this task by sniffing out the great crested newt.
17.44
Kat Stanhope: And it did find that conservation dogs could or the conservation dogs we worked with could reliably detect great crested newts and we’ve got the first Natural England licence with great Crested newts that allowed the use of conservation dogs in mitigation work.
So they’ve been used to pinpoint the location of newts in the field so that they can be rescued before the habitat gets taken then they have been then moved to the new habitat sites that we’ve created.
Fran Scott: And with every new ecological site that gets created to house protected species, a management and monitoring plan specifically tailored to that site is created, that could last as long as 50 years.
18.29
Kat Stanhope: We’ve got over 100 plots of ecological mitigation now across the route. So we’re now in, in the monitoring, timing depends on the construction time. But we’ve got some that are now in their second year of monitoring. And we’ve been monitoring things like grassland success, woodland condition, and how the ponds that we’re putting in are doing. And we do have to, we’ve have a commitment to produce an annual report detailing all of that monitoring, which is reviewed by an external group of stakeholders. Some environmental stakeholders like Natural England, Forestry Commission, the wildlife trusts, review that data every year. And they can make recommendations of how we might change management to the sites.
Fran Scott: And the management of each site can be quite intensive, it’s not enough to build a pond or plant some trees and leave it.
19.21
Simon Mackrell: So if you don’t manage the vegetation in the ponds, and they’d soon become choked up, they’d soon become overgrown through secondary succession, and they wouldn’t be suitable for great crested newts to breed in the same with the trees that we’ve planted 1000s of our hundreds of 1000s of trees alongside our grasslands, and if we didn’t manage the grasslands around the trees in the first, arguably five to six years, the trees would get out competed by the grasses and it would impede their growth.
Fran Scott: The management of each site is broken up into shot-term and long-term management strategies.
19.56
Simon Mackrell: So the initial maintenance is to allow key elements of the site’s mature to a point where they can look after themselves as it were. And then the long-term maintenance is, you know, just ensuring that that is still the case. And long-term maintenance is just doing similar things to the short term maintenance, but less frequency. And then eventually the site’s become self-sufficient. They become self-sufficient in the fact that they monitor themselves. And succession takes over and certain species will dominate, and certain species won’t. But yeah, the initial maintenance is to give it a helping hand to get to the maturation point you need it to be to sustain the flora and fauna that you’re you’ve created the sites for. So you’re constantly monitoring invasive, non-native species, make sure that they don’t get into the site and dominate.
Fran Scott: New habitats, from woodlands to grassland to wetlands are being set up all along the HS2 route but no biodiversity project is bigger than the plan to rewild 127 hectares around the Chiltern Tunnel. The plan will re-use 3 million cubic metres of excavated chalk and they will also use aggregate materials left over from the construction process.
21.19
Kat Stanhope: It does represent the biggest single habitat creation project on the HS2 green corridor.
And that will be a mix of calcareous, grassland, wetlands, native woodland, and wood pasture. And we’re reusing material that we’re taking from the Chiltern tunnel in that habitat creation project and that’s having carbon benefits as well, because it’s drastically reducing the amount of lorry routes, lorry movements that we’re having to take off site.
Fran Scott: Using the chalk as it is being removed from the tunnel to create new habitat has many environmental benefits but work still needs to be done to make sure the chalk will be suitable for growing new grasslands.
21.53
Kat Stanhope: It kind of comes out in more of a slurry kind of chalk clay slurry, so it will need some treatment to make it suitable to use as the base of the habitats.
Fran Scott: Studies are currently underway to see how the growth of various habitats are impacted by the chalk and clay slurry and what will need to be done to it to optimise the growth of new habitats.
And the new site is also being designed to allow for it to be potentially managed by livestock, a more environmentally friendly way to manage ecological sites.
22.25
Kat Stanhope: The designers have designed it in such a way that it could be conservation grazed in future. So the things that you have to think about, no feeding or watering troughs, the animals, gates to keep them in crossing points so that they can roam freely, but to get across lanes and how they will interact with the public. That’s been thought about now. So that in future if we do come into partnerships with tenant farmers or organisations that could graze that area for us, the infrastructures are already in place.
Fran Scott: But across all the new habitats being created, climate change is being taken into account. New ecological sites are being designed to be more resistant to the impact of climate change.
For example, trees and shrubs being put in are being selected from more southerly climates. Trees going into new woodland in the north could be coming from the south of England or even Northern France.
23.18
David Prys Jones: We’re not proposing on planting palm trees or any other sorts of, you know, we are still planting trees and shrub species that are native to the UK, we’re just using seedstock from areas where they’re slightly more resistant to the effects of the changing climate.
Fran Scott: The HS2 ecology team are also looking at ways to prevent ponds from drying up in the ever-increasing drought conditions being experienced in the UK.
23.45
Kat Stanhope: Things like how we line ponds, how we design the ponds so that they capture and hold water for longer periods of time, which especially something with the increasing drought conditions. Well on Phase Two at the minute we’re trialling, it sounds over engineered but tankard water a system of filter drains to bring water from a larger catchment to make sure that over a larger area that water channels into the pond. And because there are ponds in the countryside and nothing to do with created ponds that have dried up, especially over the last year in the drought conditions, so we’re trying to counter that by making sure that they hold water for longer.
Fran Scott: During the management of the sites Simon is already seeing the negative impact of flooding and dry weather.
24.17
Simon Mackrell: Of course, some sites have done better than others. Some of you know that, due to influences outside of our control, really, you know, some of our sites have flooded every winter. And that’s been a bit of a setback. And in the year that we created the sites, we think we had one of the wettest winters followed by a drought summer, followed by another very wet winter. So that was challenging, just trying to get the some of the sites established, but some of them prospered, you know, some, you know, some sites, and some species did better than others.
Fran Scott: Simon has seen over his career how ecologists have had to start adapting their behaviour to a changing climate.
25.13
Simon Mackrell: I mean, in my lifetime, definitely, you know, the grass cutting season was quite pronounced, you know, you start cutting grass, arguably into March, early April, you know, now we’re cutting grass, late February, early March, and you stop cutting grass, generally, mid-October, that was sometimes cutting grass into November, December. And that’s been noticeable in my lifetime. So, we just adapt, we just change, we just, you know, our, our seasonal calendar changes with it. Our methodology of operations doesn’t really change yet, I think it’s just, we adapt our calendar to that change.
Fran Scott: As a project with such size and timescale, HS2 is able to provide ecologists throughout the UK with an incredible opportunity to test new methods and technologies and collect huge amounts of data to monitor how the projects are going.
26.11
David Prys Jones: We were uniquely placed to do you know, to do work, like we’re doing, we’re doing monitoring research projects, at the moment on the efficacy of the transportation of ancient woodland soils, like we’ve got, the long term impact, not long term impact, lesser onward. But we’ve got the long timescales of a project, that means that we can, we can look at these sites where we’ve impacted look at the soils that we’ve translocated to different receptor sites, and see how those sites established over time, you know, that’s quite a unique place for a project to be in and we can aid the scientific base, I guess in terms of the understanding of the viability of translocating soils, I think there’s lots of exciting areas that we can we can working as a project that’s operating over such a lengthy timescale.
26.55
Kat Stanhope: We’re really lucky at HS2, I think that it’s open to funding quite a lot of innovation projects. And so one that I’ve been quite heavily involved in is it’s involved in data. Again, as I said, we’ve collected a lot of data. But we were trialling the use of drones and sensor technology to collect more data on how habitats are doing and monitoring data. Because the advantages of that is you can cover a much bigger area in a much quicker time, you’re collecting it in a consistent way.
One of the contractors used thermal-imaging. Because traditionally, you’d find ground nesting birds by walking up and down a field, which can often miss nests. And they’ve worked with a company who flew drones with thermal imaging cameras, and were able to find, I think, maybe got something like 20% more nests than were found with traditional surveyors walking across the ground. So just that the size of the project, I think allows those new ways of doing things sometimes out of necessity, because otherwise there would just be too much to cover up so those new bits of technology can actually make it viable to do the surveying and make it more efficient.
28.08
David Prys Jones: But it means that you know, as well as getting that good quality data from these new technologies, it means that we can, it’s not such a hands-on labour-intensive process like we can use our resources more efficiently. Rather than traditionally, you know, you would have had people go out and walk, walk up and down, you know, systematically through these areas to record what they found, it would take a long time, take a lot of effort.
Fran Scott: The impact on wildlife and woodland is one of the most contentious areas around the entire HS2 project.
But the size and scale of the project has allowed for the ecologists to try new mitigation methods, test new technologies and have the time to oversee the management of new wildlife habitats. And these are already showing promising results.
And both David and Kat think HS2 is a sign that ecologists roles on infrastructure projects is changing.
29.03
David Prys Jones: Well, when I first started my career, I think ecology, biodiversity was seen as a blocker for a lot of developments, you know, it was not seen as something that should be dealt with sort of harmoniously or positively, it was seen as a problem, you know, you know, people would see it as an issue, you know, newts, bats, these other things would be seen as problems for the developments. But I think things have changed.
29.26
Kat Stanhope: I agree that ecology, because I’ve been in the industry for 20 years, and it used to be seen as the ecology was the constraint. And people would, you’d be expected to deal with it and get the constraints out of the way. But I think much more the environment is thought of at the forefront now. And especially even engineers that I work with, especially younger engineers that coming through university, are trained and have part of their courses, our environment, how to deal with environment, and some of them get really excited in how to come up with the best solution to a situation rather than sitting as a problem that just needs to be kind of got underway. And so that’s really exciting.
30.05
David Prys Jones: It is, and we’ve got support, you know, all the way up to the top, you know, our chief exec recognises the importance of these topics and our board do and our non-execs do. And, you know, we speak regularly to these groups about it. And I feel that that’s a conversation that maybe, you know, 10-20 years ago might not have happened at that level, but it does.
Fran Scott: HS2 is a major infrastructure project that will unavoidably result in the loss of habitats and woodlands, but the commitment HS2 has made towards ecology and biodiversity means by the end of the project not only will there be a new high speed train line but a new Green Corridor of woodlands, more habitats and increased biodiversity that will benefit both wildlife and communities.
30.58
Simon Mackrell: There are some instances where the proposal has gone through an ancient woodland. But the majority of the sites that I see and I’ve worked on have been grassland, arable farmland, still habitat in its own right, but what I would say is of low value. And what we replaced it with on scale is, as we’ve described earlier, quite a diverse habitat. So I think the light for like, replacement would have been the expected norm 20 years ago, but what he has to have done, have actually replaced low value habitat with high value habitat. On a multiple and multiplying factor.
31.36
David Prys Jones: We are fundamentally building a new railway, there’s going to be an impact and we’re not hiding from that fact that there’s going to be an impact. I think the misconception would be maybe the scale of the impact that we’re having and also what we’re doing about it in terms of our response.
And I think part of that is due to the fact that a lot of our mitigation sites, the work that Kat and her team have been working on are in their infancy, a lot of them are not that well established or developed yet. And over time, when the habitats grow up, when the trees grow up, I think there’ll be actually something there to see in terms of an outcome, but we’re still at an early stage of a project that is going to last a number of decades.
What I’d like to say at the end of this is a railway that knits itself into the landscape and leaves something that’s better than what was there before. And I think that’s what we’re on track to do.
Fran Scott: Next time on How to Build a Railway…
Heather Donald: One of the things that we are doing really differently is sharing the innovations that are successful, right across all of HS2.
Howard Mitchell: We drive this highly collaborative approach. So in return for the funding that we’ve given them, they have a very clear business case and return on investment.
Charlotte Hills: It became a bit like watching the match back afterwards, with the team to look at, ‘How can we improve it? How can we do it better?’, and really identifying where those opportunities were.
Heather Donald: We’re putting the passengers first and foremost into our station design.
And the sensors are really helping us understand how people flow around the station today
we combine that with a layer of artificial intelligence and analytics.
Fran Scott: Your host has been me Fran Scott.
Thanks to our guests Kathleen Covill, Kat Stanhope, Simon Mackrell and David Prys Jones.
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