White-clawed crayfish: survey or research licence (CL11)
Register for a licence to survey white-clawed crayfish for research, conservation or development projects.
Applies to England
Documents
Details
This licence allows you to survey white-clawed crayfish (also called Atlantic stream crayfish) by:
- hand
- hand net
- dropped net (if you stay with the net)
- crayfish trap (to operate traps lawfully you will also need permission from the Environment Agency)
You need a separate licence for any other activities.
Register with Natural England
Before you can use this licence, you must register with Natural England using the registration form for a class licence.
What you need to pay
It costs £80 to register for a new CL11 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 white-clawed crayfish 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-government organisation
How to pay
You can pay using a bank card. Follow the GOV.UK Pay link on the registration form or survey return form.
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 action taken
You must complete the survey return form by 31 January each year, even if you’ve taken no action or did not find the target species.
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
You will be asked:
- whether you did any surveys
- what survey methods you used
- for the details of any invasive non-native crayfish found, including the species name, location (name, county and 8 figure OS grid reference), survey dates and estimate of the number found
- for the names of any accredited agents who carried out surveys on your behalf
- if you followed best practice
You must send your results to the Local Record Centre. You can do this by recording your results on the iRecord website or contacting your Local Record Centre.
Continue your registration
You can use the survey return form to continue your registration. It costs £35 a year to continue your registration.
Last updated 1 January 2024 + show all updates
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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-CL11 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 added (A29-2).
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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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Updated WML-CL11 licence form
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new version of CL11 valid from 1 January to 31 December 2015.
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First published.