Uncovering the secrets of Section 62
It’s an ancient landscape with a new National Park and 21st-century challenges. Martin O’Neill reports from the New Forest.
Hands up if you have heard of ‘Section 62’. Is it an obscure branch of the secret services? In fact, it is sometimes all that stands between our National Parks and overwhelming development pressures.
Section 62 of the Environment Act 1995 places a duty on ‘all relevant authorities’ to ‘have regard’ to the purposes of National Parks in their decisions.
This little-known clause is of more than academic interest when you are England’s smallest National Park, with international airports and large conurbations on each side, Britain’s biggest oil refinery and a major port on your eastern boundary and plans for 80,000 new homes nearby.
The New Forest National Park has more residents and more visitors per square kilometre than any other National Park in the country. As the planning authority, the Park received over 2,500 applications in its first two years. Yet it is development pressures from beyond the boundary that present the biggest challenges.
Land, sea and air
In its short life the New Forest National Park, established in 2005, has already faced threats by land, sea and air to the very things that make the Park special and worthy of the designation - tranquillity and natural beauty, for example.
Plans to expand airspace over the peaceful northern area of the Park were approved by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in February 2008 in spite of concerns raised by the National Park Authority and many others. The CAA accepted that the plans would increase noise and reduce tranquillity, but concluded that such issues were outweighed by other factors. The National Park Authority has raised the matter with Ministers.
In 2007 proposals to expand Bournemouth Airport were approved by Christchurch Borough Council in the face of concerns raised by the National Park Authority that the impacts on the New Forest National Park had not been properly assessed or mitigation offered, especially in terms of loss of tranquillity and increased traffic. The National Park Authority sought a judicial review of the decision which was refused in April 2008.
Meanwhile the New Forest National Park Authority is defending alongside Hampshire County Council and Southampton and Portsmouth City Councils a legal challenge by Associated British Ports (ABP) to the recently-adopted joint Hampshire Minerals and Waste Core Strategy. The challenge has been made by ABP for them to seek to develop a new wharf on Southampton Water from which aggregates could be imported through the Dibden Bay Site of Special Scientific Interest. The authorities believe that this need is not proven and would have an unacceptable adverse impact on the environment of the New Forest National Park and surrounding areas.
Off the National Park coast around Lymington, a place of saltmarsh, lagoons and mudflats important for wading birds, bigger Isle of Wight ferries and protective breakwaters both pose interesting questions. For example, how would breakwaters that might secure the short-term future of the harbour and popular sailing area affect the fragile coastal habitat and wildlife?
There has been good news. Southampton City Council is an example of a good neighbour that took Section 62 and the New Forest National Park into account in its decision-making. Southampton decided not to go ahead with plans for a landmark ‘laser gateway’ about which the National Park Authority and others had concerns because it would have fired beams of light into the National Park’s dark night skies. Now the Authority and the City Council are working together to promote the things that make each place special to their respective visitors via features on their websites and other initiatives.
Growing pains
The New Forest National Park Authority is still in its infancy, but it needs to grow up very quickly. It faces many of the same challenges as other National Parks such as climate change and the need to reach out to wider audiences. In terms of development pressures, it faces a scale and variety of challenges that could undermine its reason for existing.
It may be that no single development will ruin the New Forest National Park for good, but what of the cumulative effect? Does the National Park face a future nibbled not by the traditional New Forest pony but by noise, traffic, unsightly development and people pressure? Is Section 62 enough?
For now Section 62 is the only shield for National Parks beyond their boundaries. It can be enough, but only if all relevant authorities take it seriously.
There are few who would admit that the intention of their development plans or their decisions is to damage a National Park. Even those whose business is on an industrial scale with an economic imperative tend to value National Parks like the New Forest as peaceful, refreshing places to live or to visit.
But ‘our plan is an exception’ must eventually prove one too many and the sense of a tranquil, wild, pony-dotted pocket of medieval England that has survived the busy south to become the New Forest National Park will be lost.
If the ‘relevant authorities’ spare more than a passing thought for the New Forest National Park, that will help. The extent to which they take it into account in decisions will have as much influence on the Park’s future as the conservation work the National Park Authority does inside the boundary. Everyone can play a part in protecting our National Parks and the contribution they make to quality of life in our region and beyond.
How the Park contributes to the region
The New Forest National Park is the biggest area of green space in the south-east and a major contributor to the quality of life of millions and the livelihoods of thousands.
There are around 13.5m visits to the National Park’s 219 square miles (57,000 hectares) each year, the majority of which – 10.5m – are from within the region. Fifteen million people live within a 90-minute drive of the Park.
The Park is a fabulous place for healthy outdoor activities such as walking, cycling and horse-riding while also being a haven for wildlife; more than half of the Park is of national or international importance for nature conservation, a higher proportion than in any other English National Park.
Visitors generate over £70m in spending a year and support around 2,500 jobs in the Park. The rural economy of the Forest includes farming, forestry and ‘commoners’ who own the famous New Forest ponies which help to shape the landscape.
More than 34,000 people live within the New Forest National Park boundary, making it the most densely-populated National Park in the country.
A special place
The New Forest National Park’s landscape is unique; it is a ‘living’ and working remnant of medieval England with an overwhelming sense of continuity, tradition, and history. It is the survival of not just one special quality but a whole range of features that brings a sense of completeness and integrity.
These features include:
The New Forest’s outstanding natural beauty: the sights, sounds and smells of ancient woodland with veteran trees, heathland, bog, autumn colour and an unspoilt coastline with views of the Solent and Isle of Wight;
An extraordinary diversity of plants and animals of international importance;
A unique historic, cultural and archaeological heritage from royal hunting ground to ship-building, salt making and 500 years of military coastal defence;
An historic commoning system that maintains so much of what people know and love as ‘the New Forest’ forming the heart of a working landscape based on farming and forestry;
The iconic New Forest pony together with donkeys, pigs and cattle roaming free;
Tranquillity in the midst of the busy, built-up south of England;
Wonderful opportunities for quiet recreation, learning and discovery in one of the last extensive, gentle landscapes in the south including unmatched open access on foot and horseback;
A healthy environment: fresh air, clean water, local produce and a sense of ‘wildness’;
Strong and distinctive local communities with real pride in and sense of identity with their local area.
Park purposes
The purposes of the New Forest National Park are:
To conserve and enhance the natural beauty, wildlife and cultural heritage of the Park;
To promote understanding and enjoyment of the Park’s special qualities.
In addition, the National Park has a duty to foster the social and economic well-being of communities within the Park.
New chapter
The New Forest became a National Park in March 2005. It is the first National Park in the south-east and it was the first to be created from scratch in England in nearly 50 years.
Most of England’s National Parks were created in the 1950s. The Broads Authority, created in 1989, is part of the National Park family with equivalent status but it has some different responsibilities.
National Park status is the highest level of countryside designation, putting the New Forest in the premier league of UK and world landscapes.
Words: 1492
Written by Martin O’Neill, New Forest National Park Authority