With a General Election on the horizon, we have developed our Call To Action alongside UKSoils and BES which outline eight clear asks that we must be incorporated into the farming and environment policy and manifesto development of the major parties.

The Call to Action reflects the most basic steps needed to protect and improve our soils – pragmatic, proportionate and targeted to the areas where government leadership can have the greatest impact - regulations, incentives, guidance and research.

We collaborated with the Soil Association and the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust to urge MPs to support amendment 2 to the Environment Bill which places "soil health and quality" as one of the Bill’s priority areas for the setting of long-term environmental targets.

Two soil-related amendments were debated in the House of Lords in September and compelling points where made as to why soils should be better reflected in the Bill. We outlined why this matters and what we learnt from these debates in the following document.

We collaborated with the Soil Association and the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust to lobby and brief peers to table amendments or support amendments to include the soil in the Environment Bill.

In the run up to the 2019 election we wrote to the Conservatives, Labour Party, Liberal Democrats and Green Party to ask them to include a concrete commitment to sustainably managed soils by 2030.

Defra asked SSA to convene stakeholders and experts to examine how to develop a healthy soils indicator for the 25 YEP, the only subject-specific workshop to be requested by the department

The SSA Science Panel propose ‘healthy soils’ as a headline indicator within the 25 YEP: any policy instrument that fails to recognise and prioritise soil’s pivotal role risks failing in its core objectives.

Following the Soil Health Indicators workshop, and at Defra’s request, we presented the department with a set of soil health indicators developed by the SSA Science Panel. 

We submitted a parliamentary question through our champion Rebecca Pow MP asking for further clarification on whether soil will be classified as a public good under ELM. We collaborated with NIAB and Yeo Valley on two trial proposals with soil health at the heart, and are waiting to hear if these have been accepted as part of the scheme’s pilot design phase.

We received two letters of support from government ministers: Michael Gove, then SOS at Defra and Greg Clark, then SOS at BEIS.

We collaborated with the Environment Agency on their recent State of our Environment: Soil report launched at the inaugural meeting of the Devon & Cornwall Soils Alliance. 

Our parliamentary launch event was hosted by our champion Rebecca Pow MP and featured speakers from government including then Secretary of State Michael Gove and Baroness Young of the House of Lords.