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A THING OF BEAUTY
A NEW National Park in the South Downs, covering an area of 627 square miles, has been given the green light by Environment Secretary Hilary Benn. The new park will stretch from Beachy Head to Winchester, encompassing rolling chalk uplands, river valleys and wooded greens. The decision, announced on 2 April, follows a decade of legal wrangling and a 19-month long public inquiry.
The designation order will not be confirmed until consultation has finished and a proper decision has been made on additional areas such as the Western Weald. This means that the park cannot be formally created until at least the early part of 2011, although a new South Downs National Park Authority is expected to be established by April 2010.
However campaigners have lost their fight to include land between Chichester and Lavant within the new South Downs National Park – prompting fears it will be left at the mercy of developers. Residents in the Summersdale area of Chichester fear that the pulling back of the boundary line to just north of the strategic gap will leave it vulnerable to new housing developments. Chichester campaigners including the Chichester Society, district councillors and the Summersdale Residents' Association wanted the boundary to wrap around the city. They had hoped that national park status would help prevent unwanted development in the area, and avoid Chichester and the village of Lavant merging into a single conurbation. Despite a strong case put forward by the council and other organisations, the national park inspector said that the quality of the landscape in the strategic gap was not good enough for inclusion in the park.Councillor for Chichester North, Richard Plowman, said there were grave concerns about the announcement.
"There is great disappointment that the protection of that strategic gap has been lost. One of the main concerns I think is that it is great when you are in the national park, but not if you are on the outskirts of it, it is quite different. I think it will put pressure around the edges of the park boundary, you can't develop in the national park boundary but anything that is very close to the boundary piles on pressure for development.” He also said tha t” while there had been huge relief over the decision to reject plans for a gravel extraction and processing site, it was a great shame that Lavant's character was now threatened by changes to the SDNP boundary.
Executive committee member of the Chichester Society, John Templeman, who has been leading the society's stance on the national park issue said that the inclusion of the strategic gap would have given 'permanent protection' to farmland and woodland around West Broyle, the strategic gap between Summersdale and Lavant and the Lavant valley to the east of Graylingwell. Mr Templeman said: "While we are disappointed that our case has been rejected, we are greatly encouraged by WSCC's planning committee's refusal to permit the reopening of gravel pits at Hunters Race with its grave impact on the narrow strategic gap. Chichester will be an important gateway for walkers and cyclists into the National Park via Centurion Way with hopefully a second footpath/cycleway from Graylingwell to the Trundle."
Lavant Parish Council chairman Graham Kelly said that he was pleased Lavant had been included within the boundary but said that the council needed to examine the boundary changes in more detail.
To see the boundary area in detail go to :- http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/Images/Map%2041_tcm6-10398.pdf
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