Our response to the Designated Landscapes Review

27 September 2019

The North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) Partnership has welcomed the findings of the Designated Landscapes Review (the ‘Glover Review’). Director of the AONB Partnership, Chris Woodley-Stewart, said: “The review recognises the value of AONBs and the hard work that staff teams do to conserve and enhance the natural beauty of special places like the North Pennines and to help people discover, enjoy and understand them. We welcome proposals to strengthen the purposes of our AONBs and to align these purposes with those of the National Parks, while renaming AONBs as National Landscapes and making us statutory consultees in the planning system. The review outlines many opportunities that exist for AONB teams to carry out even more work on nature recovery and engaging people with their natural and cultural heritage, and crucially it identifies a need for increased resources to do this.

“It’s unclear how the Government will respond to the review and in what timescale, but we will be working with the National Association for AONBs and other AONB teams to help shape the response in ways which maximise our capacity to do more for nature recovery in particular. Earlier this year, through the ‘Colchester Declaration’, AONB teams across the country set ambitious targets to protect what remains and recover some of what has been lost in our natural environment. The proposals in this review support this ambition, and offer a new framework through which we can deliver extensive benefits for people and nature.”

The full response from the National Association of AONBs can be found here: https://landscapesforlife.org.uk/application/files/4015/6931/9023/Glover_Response_NAAONB_230919.pdf