It costs £80£104 to register for a new CL10b 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 hazel dormice 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-governmental 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.
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 need to complete a survey return form by 31 January each year, even if you have taken no action or did not find 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 dead or injured dormice found
for the names of any accredited agents who completed surveys on your behalf
Added a link to the updated 'Apply for a class licence to survey protected species' form.
10 February 2025
We are currently making improvements to our licensing forms.
The register for a class licence form on this page will change to a new format in early March 2025.
Once this happens, the current version of the form will no longer be available.
1 January 2025
Updated this licence to cover the period 1 January to 31 December 2025. Reworded several sections to make the information clearer, including the section on 'Registering to use this licence'.
22 March 2024
In the 'Continue your registration' section, corrected the link to the 'survey return form'.
1 January 2024
There is an update to this licence for 1 January 2024.
1 January 2023
Annual licence update, valid from 1 January 2023.
21 October 2022
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
1 January 2022
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
1 October 2021
From 1 October 2021, you will need to pay £80 to register for this licence, unless you're exempt.
1 January 2021
Annual licence update.
16 December 2020
Report form LR-CL10a-10b added.
17 November 2020
Accessible version of licence added - HTML.
1 January 2020
Replaced licence with new version issued 1 January 2020
1 January 2019
Replaced licence with new version issued 1 January 2019
26 February 2018
Registration form A29-1 added.
1 January 2018
Replaced licence with new version issued 1 January 2018
1 January 2017
Annual licence update 2017.
1 January 2016
Replaced licence with new version issued 1 January 2016.