Mitigating recreational and nutrient impacts

Mitigating recreational and nutrient impacts

Mitigating recreational impacts

All applications for net new dwellings and other forms of overnight accommodation are required to address their recreational impacts on internationally protected sites.

For the New Forest’s designated sites, all new development within the National Park is required to address impacts. In addition, development within 5.6km of the Solent’s protected sites is also required to address recreational impacts.

Established recreation mitigation schemes have been adopted for both the New Forest and Solent. These schemes set out a package of measures to address the recreational impacts arising from new development.

The National Park Authority has prepared a template for completing Unilateral Undertakings to enable a financial contribution to be made to the Authority for ecological mitigation.

The obligations usually take effect when planning permission is granted, and you will need to pay the contribution before you commence development. The Unilateral Undertaking template and accompanying guidance note is included here.

Mitigating impacts from nutrients

Excessive nutrients (principally nitrogen) in the Solent’s European sites are causing eutrophication, leading to an increase in algae growth. This has an adverse impact on the habitats and species within the European nature conservation designations sites in and around the Solent to which the Habitat Regulations apply.

Following recent case law, Natural England has advised that there is a likely significant effect on the Solent’s designated sites due to the increase in wastewater from new housing and any other development providing overnight accommodation which would discharge into the Solent.

The internationally-designated habitats of the River Avon to the west of the New Forest are also affected by elevated levels of nutrients – in this case phosphates. The scale of planned new development in the catchment of the River Avon that falls within the National Park is low, but any proposals for net new dwellings and other forms of overnight accommodation in this catchment must demonstrate it is phosphate neutral.

Natural England recommends that the impact of development on water quality in the catchments of the Solent and the River Avon is examined within the Appropriate Assessment process. For this reason, we are requesting the submission of a Nutrient Mitigation Checklist for any planning application for a net increase in dwellings or providing overnight accommodation.

In February 2024, the Government issued updated national guidance and tools for addressing nutrient neutrality. This includes revised nutrient budget calculators for both the River Avon and Solent catchments, which supersede the previous version of the calculators. Importantly, the revised budget calculators factor in the upgrades to certain wastewater treatment works required by 2030 under the provisions of the Levelling Up & Regeneration Act 2023.

This updated information and relevant budget calculators are available to download from the Government website here: Using the nutrient neutrality calculators – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). 

Water catchment areas in the New Forest National Park

Applicants are advised to carefully review the latest Natural England guidance (March 2022) in preparing their applications. We have also prepared a high-level map illustrating the respective water catchment areas for the National Park to indicate the areas affected by the respective nitrates and phosphates issues. This is available to download on the right hand side.

The New Forest National Park is covered by three main water catchment areas:

• The Test
• The New Forest
• The Hampshire Avon

Detailed maps of these catchment areas can be viewed at Environment Agency – Catchment Data Explorer by searching using the three catchments named above.

Identifying the relevant catchment for mitigation measures – Natural England advice (June 2021)

In June 2021 Natural England provided the National Park Authority with updated advice on the geographic scope for nutrient mitigation for new development draining to the New Forest catchment. This latest advice is available on this website and confirms the following:

It is the responsibility of the applicant/developer to find suitable and sufficient nutrient mitigation solutions. A list of nutrient mitigation suppliers is available on the Partnership for South Hampshire’s website at Mitigation schemes available to developers – Partnership for South Hampshire (push.gov.uk). This information includes details of the catchments that the mitigation schemes serve.

We are also a member of the Solent Mitigation Partnership – a collaborative initiative made up of 15 local planning authorities within the Solent region who are working together to provide nutrient mitigation to housing developers. Further details of the Solent nutrient credits available through the work of the Partnership are available at Home – Solent Mitigation Partnership

We have also prepared flowcharts of the process for securing nutrient mitigation for both the planning application and prior approval routes and these can be found under the ‘Solent nitrate mitigation’ and ‘Avon phosphate mitigation’ tabs on the right of this page.”

Please note that the drop down boxes in the Nitrate Mitigation Checklist will not work if you open the document in Microsoft Edge or Internet Explorer. For these to work you will instead need to save the document to your computer and then open the document using Adobe Reader or other appropriate software.