101 - Herefordshire Plateau : Detailed Statements of Environmental Opportunity

This section expands on the Headline Statements of Environmental Opportunity and provides further detail on each of the Statements of Environmental Opportunity.

SEO 1

SEO 1: Protect, manage and enhance the mosaic of semi-natural habitats associated with the Herefordshire plateau – ancient woodlands, traditional orchards, lowland meadows, lowland acid grassland, wood pasture and parkland, common land and traditional hedgerows – to maintain and strengthen their connectivity and landscape character, and to make them more resilient to change in climate while maintaining viable and appropriate agricultural activity as part of that mosaic.

For example by:

• Maintaining the current extent of semi-natural and ancient woodlands and introducing active management where appropriate, to improve landscape character, recreation opportunities, biodiversity and geodiversity and increase the benefits they can bring to soil quality and long-term carbon storage, for example along the eastern fringe of Sapey Brook.
• Promoting and supporting opportunities arising from agri-environment schemes, working with landowners and managers to incorporate management of farmland habitats, develop and create networks of new habitats and enhance the rural character of this landscape.
• Restoring the ancient woodland landscape by joining up existing blocks of ancient woodland through woodland planting, thereby reinforcing the woodland feel of the National Character Area (NCA).
• Increasing the extent of native woodland. Protect and manage existing woodlands to improve connectivity between fragmented small woodlands and other habitats; retain and extend wet valley woods within the River Frome Valley; and introduce (or re-introduce) traditional coppice management where appropriate as a source of wood fuel, short rotation coppice or biofuel. This will increase recreational opportunities, as well as carbon storage for climate regulation (Woodland Opportunities Map – Priority for woodland planting based on data from themes, Forestry Commission, 2007).
• Improving connectivity between woodlands through hedgerow establishment and management where appropriate.
• Protecting and managing the enclosed small-scale field pattern by enhancing the hedgerow network throughout the NCA, retaining, managing, restoring and planting new hedgerows and hedgerow trees in the traditional local style to enhance landscape character and improve habitat connectivity, particularly where this can assist in regulating soil erosion. Damson hedgerows are a particularly distinctive feature of the area (in and around Bromyard).
• Protecting the current extent of lowland meadows, restoring where possible, and where appropriate creating new grasslands to reduce fragmentation, increasing buffer zones and increasing connectivity to other habitats to improve biodiversity and landscape character.
• Protecting, managing and enhancing traditional orchards to increase the variety of age structure and local varieties, ensuring availability of the genetic resource to enable orchard trees to adapt to the effects of a changing climate. Ensure a continuity of deadwood to support important lichens such as the golden eye lichen, previously thought to be extinct in Britain but found in 2007 in an undisclosed location in Herefordshire, and rot holes to support Red Data Book species and England’s main population and concentration of noble chafer beetle, currently classified as vulnerable in the UK. Improve the condition of the underlying grassland to enhance the lowland meadow resource.
• Supporting the Malvern Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty partnership orchard project, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. This aims to secure greater community interest and involvement in orchards, to conserve their unique heritage and, ultimately, to help to save this distinctive and threatened part of the three counties landscape (that is, of Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire).
• Maintaining standing dead trees and fallen trees within historic wood pasture and parkland, traditional orchards and hedgerows (where safe to do so), to provide habitats for a range of species including invertebrates, roosting bats and birds. Replant to replace, where appropriate, fallen and decayed ancient, veteran and mature trees, to maintain landscape character and sense of place and to enhance biodiversity.
• Promoting sustainable farm practices to create a farmed landscape that is more permeable to the movement of species and supports a greater range and number of species.
• Integrating environmentally beneficial options into the farmed landscape which will benefit pollinators and help to strengthen the network of habitats in the farmed landscape.
• Managing arable cropping patterns to encourage rarer arable plants, farmland birds and mammals and creating grass and floristically rich margins around arable fields to enhance opportunities for pollinators, while also helping to reduce rapid run-off of water and subsequent soil erosion.
• Protecting common land by controlling bracken and scrub and restoring lowland acidic grassland. Continue to work with communities to re- connect them with common land, as at Bringsty Common, and to explore a combination of new and traditional management practices (such as stock grazing). This will help to create and maintain the structural diversity needed to support the range of plants and animals associated with these habitats and will contribute to the sense of place, history and cultural associations with common land.
• Encouraging the purchase of local produce to benefit local farm businesses, climate regulation (by reducing food miles) and local culture.

SEO 2

SEO 2: Protect and appropriately manage the distinctive character of the Herefordshire plateau landscape, conserving and enhancing the historic environment and features, settlement pattern, geodiversity, tranquillity and sense of place. Protect and maintain the natural geomorphological features and rock exposures that show the strong influence that geodiversity has on the landscape and which can be used as an educational resource to study past climatic conditions. Protect and maintain public access to and the enjoyment of the wider countryside for residents and visitors.

For example by:

• Protecting and managing the historic and cultural heritage assets of the area, including remains from the Neolithic, bronze-age, Roman and
  medieval periods, and especially the prominent remains on higher ground, such as the iron-age hill forts of Garmsley Camp and Wall Hills Camp.
• Conserving and protecting historic parks and gardens, commons, medieval settlement patterns, distinctive farmsteads and sunken lanes, which also contribute to the tranquillity and sense of place of the area.
• Protecting and managing the longstanding tradition of cultivating fruit and hops that gives the area a strong historical and cultural identity, particularly protecting and managing surviving concentrations of hop fields around Bosbury and Stanford Bishop.
• Restoring or maintaining traditional orchard buildings such as cider houses, which contribute to the sense of place, history and cultural associations of orchards across this area.
• Conserving and appropriately managing the area’s rich architectural legacy and distinct pattern of historical dispersed settlement, which includes farmsteads, commoners’ and squatters’ cottages, scattered hamlets, small manor farms, medieval timber-framed manor houses, traditional local reddish brown and grey Old Red Sandstone buildings and occasionally distinctive timber-framed buildings, as well as the gentry houses and legacy of ecclesiastical buildings.
• Conserving and managing the characteristic geodiversity, enhancing access to it and increasing interpretation and appreciation of the role and function of geodiversity across the Herefordshire plateau, including the role of geology in determining appropriate habitat restoration and the role of geological processes in planning for future climate change resilience. Support local initiatives to promote, engage and improve wider public understanding of geodiversity.
• Ensuring that any potential future improvements to rural roads reflect local character, retain hedgerow enclosure and wide grass verges to improve habitat networks, and avoid bringing a degree of standardisation and signage clutter to the Herefordshire plateau.
• Promoting and encouraging the use of local building stone, and appropriate small-scale extraction of stone that could provide material for repairing traditional buildings and traditional estate walls. Promote and encourage the use of other sustainable and locally sourced materials, vernacular building techniques and styles, and existing landscape character, to inform design and ensure integration with the surrounding landscape. Managing former extraction sites for their range of mutually beneficial heritage interests including geodiversity, biodiversity and industrial archaeology. Work in partnership with sand and gravel quarry operators to develop restoration plans to preserve geological features when extraction ceases and to improve access to cuttings, quarries and other geological features by improving footpaths and providing signage and interpretation.
• Raising awareness of Local Biodiversity and Geodiversity Action Plans in the planning phase of developments, to ensure consideration of the importance of Local Biological and Geological Sites to heritage and the unique habitats they provide, as well as the contribution they can make to the sense of place, history and cultural associations of the area.
• Working with local geodiversity partnerships to designate further Local Geological Sites to assist with the understanding and enjoyment of geodiversity and to provide opportunities for recreation and volunteering.
• Working with local authorities, consultants and developers to ensure that due consideration is given to important geological exposures (Local Geological Sites) to protect them and to ensure that their integrity is maintained and that they are not obscured by development.
• Encouraging volunteering through geodiversity partnerships. Train volunteers in survey techniques and geo-conservation methods to improve the quality of sites and to retain the knowledge and skills required for future management of sites.
• Protecting and maintaining the high level of public access throughout the area, including the Three Choirs Way, the Three Rivers Ride, the Herefordshire Trail and Bringsty Common, in addition to promoting the opportunities that the Malvern Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty provides (albeit that only a small proportion falls within the Herefordshire Plateau NCA) and managing existing public rights of way.

SEO 3

SEO 3: Protect and manage the water environment of the Herefordshire plateau (rivers, streams and other waterbodies) as a multifunctional resource; and conserve and protect the quality and quantity of surface water through partnership working at the catchment scale, employing positive management practices in and around the catchment to improve water quality, reduce soil erosion, regulate water flow and minimise the impacts of flooding, and contributing to sense of place and climate regulation.

For example by:

• Locating buffer strips to run across slopes and on either side of watercourses to intercept sediment and associated nutrients – particularly within the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs priority catchments of the Teme and the Lugg and within the Frome Valley – to aid improvements in water quality.
• Encouraging good soil management, including increasing organic matter content to enhance the structural condition of soils, and improving water-holding capacity and water infiltration to aid the local aquifer recharge.
• Encouraging the creation and maintenance of low-input grasslands, and wide grass buffer strips in the river valleys (of which the Frome is the largest) where this can bring significant benefits for water quality on freely draining, slightly acid loamy soils that are susceptible to erosion.
• Restoring natural river geomorphology where this is viable and where it is of particular benefit to biodiversity, including for fish populations.
• Bringing rivers back into continuity with their flood plains and re- establishing backwaters as a refuge for aquatic species in times of drought, creating wetland habitats (some outside the Herefordshire Plateau NCA) to reduce flood risk downstream in settlements such as Bromyard. Increase storage of water through winter water-storage areas where possible, helping to make a significant contribution to mitigating flood risk while contributing to biodiversity, sense of place, water quality and climate regulation. Allow the seasonal inundation of wetlands and flood plain grassland as part of flood alleviation measures. This reflects the policies of the Catchment Flood Management Plans, as well as being essential to sustaining wetland habitats.
• Supporting the Teme Catchment Partnership in working to bring a wide range of partners (individuals, communities, organisations, companies and land managers) together to solve some of the current problems in the area, to improve water quality and wildlife habitats in and around the catchment.
• Protecting and managing the water environment (rivers, streams and other waterbodies) as a multifunctional resource. Where possible, appropriately manage the streams and rivers to maintain natural meanders, their associated vegetation and their marginal habitats.
• Managing woodland on hillsides and bankside trees where appropriate by coppicing to minimise the risk of land slips and soil erosion and to slow down run-off from the plateau areas. This can be achieved by encouraging the planting of strategically located deciduous woodland, principally on steeper valley sides where it can aid the reduction of diffuse pollution reaching watercourses. Repair eroded channels and tracks and encourage cross-slope cultivation.
• Creating areas of wet woodland in appropriate places to reduce diffuse pollution and flood risk.
• Managing livestock grazing close to rivers and streams to minimise soil compaction, soil erosion and diffuse pollution while addressing the need for the provision of water for livestock that does not have an impact on the water quality.
• Encouraging sustainable water use – both within and outside the boundaries of the NCA, and across sectors – to protect the local aquifer from over-abstraction and to mitigate the negative impacts of low river flows on biodiversity while improving resilience to climate change.
• Promoting watercourses as a strategic resource for raising awareness and understanding of geomorphology, using the River Frome as a good example.