The Conservation Management System Consortium, through its membership and the users of its CMS software, has an unrivalled overview of UK conservation management plans for protected areas and other nature sites.  The Consortium is in the process of establishing a project library for sharing good practice between users of its software.  As a complementary resource it is also important to share planning know how.  The CMSC Planning Network is a start in this direction.

The breakup of the British Nature Conservancy Council and the establishment of the separate UK nature conservation agencies for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has made it difficult to obtain a national perspective of conservation management.  The voluntary sector is also highly compartmented. In this context, the project library and the conservation planning network will help rectify the compartmentation of effort.

Management plans for UK nature sites are usually based upon the structure of management plans that were implemented by the Nature Conservancy in Britain in the late 1960s-early 1970s. The plan is set out two sections, namely descriptive and prescriptive. In this  pro forma below there is a typical set of headings. These may not be applicable for all nature reserves and wildlife sanctuaries, and other headings may be required for some reserves (for example the pro formacontains no marine headings).

The Conservation Management System Consortium is the long-term outcome of an initiative of the old UK Nature Conservancy Council to provide a basic planning and recording logic for its site managers that could be applied to all nature sites and codify all the necessary operations.

After the regional responsibilities of the NCC were devolved to country agencies, they all came together with the main conservation NGOs to develop the paper system as a computer database. 

The membership of the Consortium now represents all the UK Government conservation agencies, the major national and local NGOs, local authorities and national parks.  The vision and aims of the original NCC planning guides are now fulfilled by the Conservation Management System, a software package consisting of a relational database for producing management plans, scheduling projects, and reporting on outcomes of the planning process.

The Consortium has a commercial agreement with a software company, exeGeSiS, to market the CMS software, and provide technical support and training.  Any profits from the commercial operations are used by the Consortium to develop the software and its applications.

The Consortium has the following membership:-