Natural England has launched a survey for users of General Licences for wild bird control, being conducted by ICF, an independent surveying company. The purpose of the survey, which closes on Monday 1 February 2027 at 5pm, is to understand better how General Licences GL40, GL41 and GL42 (summary in table below) are used in practice, the situations in which they are relied upon, and whether they remain practical and effective for those who use them.

To avoid the survey results being distorted by non-practitioners, it only has questions for those who actively used one or more of those three GLs in 2026, and asks participants a series of questions relating to that use, some of which will require records to have been kept.

The questions include: exact annual bag of each species controlled, locations and habitat types where control has occurred, the purpose for the control measures, details of non-lethal deterrents (if any) used before lethal control, methods of lethal control used, months of the years when control happened.

There are also a few questions on the licences themselves, on their ease of use and understanding, and how the respondent would view the possibility of reporting information (e.g. number of birds controlled under the general licences) back to Natural England.

The Countryside Alliance does not support mandatory reporting as a condition of general licence use and is concerned that such measures would be onerous to users and would deter beneficial use of the licences for conservation and to protect crops, livestock and public health. As things stand, mandatory reporting would come with no apparent justification and would go against the objective of these General Licences to be light-touch regulation.

Those who would like to respond can do so here. Answers are anonymous and you do not have to answer questions that would prefer not to or are unable to. Completing the survey will take approximately 15-20 minutes.