Consultants Portal Project update

Progress on the Consultants Portal is now well underway after the appointment of a part-time Consultants Portal Officer, Ella Vogel, by the NBN Trust in June.  With an undergraduate degree in Zoology and Conservation from Bangor University, Ella has had experience in both practical and office-based conservation through work with the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation, Natural England and the Northumberland Rivers Trust.

Ella’s work with the Consultants Portal will see consultants and ecologists re-engaged with the development of the Portal, leading towards its completion in September.  Training and further engagement with consultancies will continue after this point in order to ensure that the Consultants Portal is used widely throughout Consultancies in the UK.
 
It is hoped that the Consultants Portal will be an easy to use online data recording system which is the first port of call for consultants across the UK who want to share their biological records. The aim is to make it easier for consultants and other biodiversity professionals to enter and manage their species data online.  These records will then be shared via the NBN Gateway so that they can be re-used to support research, education, conservation and decision-making.  Data shared in this way will be made available to relevant national recording schemes and to local environmental records centres.
 
The Consultants Portal is managed by the NBN Trust and is being developed in partnership with CIEEM (Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management), ALERC (Association of Local Environmental Records Centres) and BRC (Biological Records Centre) with initial funding from Defra
 
Throughout June, over 20 consultants and environmental professionals have been re-contacted and re-engaged with the project, and a further 5 new consultancies have been introduced to the project, a number that we hope continues to increase over the coming months.  There are currently 66 registered users, and 466 records in the system, and we are aiming to have these numbers increase to include over 5,000 records submitted via the Portal by the end of this financial year.
 
The Portal is evolving as we take on advice and comments from consultants who have trialled the site for us. We will continue to make changes until we have reached a point where the site works seamlessly to satisfy the needs of our users and is able to efficiently capture data and biological records from across the UK.
 
We are eager to receive comments and suggestions from anyone who may have a use for the Consultants Portal in the future, so please do create an account for yourself and provide feedback on your user experience (please note that any records submitted to the Consultants Portal are added to the live database via the NBN Gateway).
 
We can offer full support and training in the use of the Portal and any comments relating to this, questions or queries can be sent to consultantsportal@nbn.org.uk

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