GovWire

The People and Nature Survey (PaNS) has been delivered by Natural England in its current format since 2020 and forms part of Natural Englands statutory function to inform evidence-based policy decisions on English residents (both adults and childrens) engagement with the natural environment, and to assess the impact of such engagement and changes through time.

PaNS replaced the Monitor of Engagement with the Natural Environment (MENE) survey which ran from 2009/10 to 2018/19. In 2017, a strategic review of MENE was conducted to consider ways to ensure the survey continued to meet both current and emerging user needs and how to respond to falling response rates and increasing costs. The recommendations of this review led to the development of PaNS which was conducted for the first time in April 2020.

This report summarises an assessment of the comparability between the People and Nature Survey (PaNS) and the Monitor of Engagement with the Natural Environment (MENE) considering sample design, survey mode and questionnaire changes and the impact for users of the statistics.