The Board of Natural England has been recommended to resist designation of new protected landscape areas or whole-boundary reviews of existing AONBs, national parks etc..
It considered recommendations at its last meeting for a policy on protected landscapes to build on the overarching landscape policy agreed last year, but it is not saying yet whether the Board accepted the recommendations or not.
The report notes that 23% of England is now covered by statutory designations but says the family of designations cannot grow indefinitely and further designation is likely to be confined to a few important boundary definitions unless the legal basis changes, for example, to include climate change adaptation.
Work is continuing on the South Downs national park and the area between the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales.
But the report says that, in 2004, an environment minister told the former Countryside Agency that only "realistic" boundary variations stand a good chance of confirmation and that variations should not snowball into whole boundary reviews. The minister told the Agency to "manage stakeholder expectations effectively".
"Natural England's ‘record of known pressures for designation work' now has 32 different entries including six proposed new AONBs.," says the report.
"There is wide anticipation among a number of local authorities and interest groups that Natural England will implement a protected landscape boundary review programme. This has never been suggested either by Natural England or the Countryside Agency."
