Hazel dormice: survey or research – level 2 licence (CL10b)
Register for a licence to temporarily mark hazel dormice to survey for research, conservation or development projects – and report actions taken under the licence.
Applies to England
Documents
Details
This licence allows you to temporarily mark dormice by fur-clipping, and to handle dormice in:
- nests
- nest tubes
- nest boxes
You must release the dormice where they were captured as soon as you’ve examined them.
You must apply for an individual licence or a level 1 licence for survey, research or conservation work not covered by this licence.
For development work affecting hazel dormice, you must apply for a mitigation licence.
Register with Natural England
You must register with Natural England before you can use this licence.
Register for a class licence to survey hazel dormice
Natural England will confirm your registration in writing, usually within 30 working days. You must not carry out any licensed activities until you receive written confirmation of your registration.
What you need to pay
It costs £104 to register for a new CL10b licence.
It costs £35 a year to continue your registration.
You must declare the intended use of the licence on your registration form. This will determine if you need to pay, such as to survey hazel dormice for development projects.
Natural England will refund unsuccessful applications.
When you do not need to pay
You do not need to pay if the licence is used for:
- voluntary purposes – any work you do is unpaid and you are registered with an organisation or charity as a volunteer
- conservation, science or research purposes, and research related to the protected species is carried out by a student or an employee of an academic institution or research body or an environmental non-governmental organisation
How to pay
You can pay using a bank card. Follow the GOV.UK Pay link on the registration form or survey licence return form.
Read the terms and conditions for paying for a wildlife licence.
References
You need to complete a reference to support a survey or research licence form when you register for this licence if you:
- have not held a licence for the species or a similar species for the last 3 years
- have a licence but want to add new methods
Report actions taken under this licence
You must use the hazel dormouse survey licence return form to report any actions taken under this licence. Report your actions between 1 and 31 January each year, even if you’ve taken no action or did not find the target species.
If you need to submit it outside these dates (for exceptional reasons only), email wildlife.scicons@naturalengland.org.uk.
You will be asked:
- for your licence details
- whether you did any surveys
- what survey methods you used
- for the names of any accredited agents who completed surveys on your behalf
- if you followed best practice
For each site where you did surveys, you must record the:
- location of the site (10 figure Ordnance Survey grid reference and county)
- start and end date of the period that surveys took place
- purpose of your surveys
- total number of hazel dormice captured or disturbed by each licensable method at each survey site
- peak count of hazel dormice seen during a single survey at each site
- details of any dead or injured dormice found
You must also send:
- actions taken under this licence, including surveys where dormouse were not found, to the People’s Trust for Endangered Species
- repeat nest-box monitoring data to the National Dormouse Monitoring Programme
- one-off or incidental records to the National Dormouse Database
Submit a hazel dormouse survey licence return
Using your licence for another year
By reporting your actions, you can continue to use the licence for the following reporting period. If you will use the licence for surveys to inform development projects, you will need to pay £35 to continue your registration for another year.
Updates to this page
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Updated this licence to cover the period 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2030. Additionally, the process for submitting a survey licence return has changed and a new online form has been added to the page.
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Updated licence charge.
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Added a link to the updated 'Apply for a class licence to survey protected species' form.
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We are currently making improvements to our licensing forms. The register for a class licence form on this page will change to a new format in early March 2025. Once this happens, the current version of the form will no longer be available.
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Updated this licence to cover the period 1 January to 31 December 2025. Reworded several sections to make the information clearer, including the section on 'Registering to use this licence'.
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In the 'Continue your registration' section, corrected the link to the 'survey return form'.
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There is an update to this licence for 1 January 2024.
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Annual licence update, valid from 1 January 2023.
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Page updated: You should only complete and submit a survey return form between 1 and 31 January. If you need to submit it outside these dates (for exceptional reasons only) email wildlife.scicons@naturalengland.org.uk
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Changes to this page include the: - annual licence update, valid from 1 January 2022 - replacement of the PDF form for an accessible online form to submit survey returns - addition of information about the £35 fee to continue your registration which comes into effect in January 2022
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From 1 October 2021, you will need to pay £80 to register for this licence, unless you're exempt.
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Annual licence update.
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Report form LR-CL10a-10b added.
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Accessible version of licence added - HTML.
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Replaced licence with new version issued 1 January 2020
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Replaced licence with new version issued 1 January 2019
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Registration form A29-1 added.
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Replaced licence with new version issued 1 January 2018
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Annual licence update 2017.
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Replaced licence with new version issued 1 January 2016.
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First published.