A Statement on Common Standards Monitoring

• At a local level, staff have a framework within which they can develop their programme of site monitoring with the confidence that this is supported and being implemented throughout the country. The standards enable staff to make consistent judgements about site condition and help to ensure that judgements are comparable from one person to another and from one site to another.
• If data are collected, managed and exchanged following accepted standards the costs of data exchange are substantially reduced. Less time is spent interpreting and reconciling data from different sources and consistent data facilitates the comparison of results in time and space.
• Common standards allow individual agencies to establish procedures to ensure data is provided at the right time, in the right format. The data can then be aggregated and information produced at a range of geographical scales. This will enable obligations to report on the condition of designated sites at a country level and at a United Kingdom level to be met.