(England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland)
Local Nature Reserves are statutory sites. However, in this case, this simply means that they are designated using a legal mechanism. The actual protection from development that these sites receive is provided by local planning policies, rather than the law. In general, the policies aim to resist development which would adversely affect Local Nature Reserves.
Some LNRs also have SSSI status and would be protected by the same legislation and policies, while others may have Local Site status and may be further protected from development via the local planning documents.