94 - Leicestershire Vales : 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 and appropriately manage the strong historic character and heritage and the geological assets within the rural and urban landscapes, maintaining the evidence of past land use and connections between agriculture, settlement pattern and topography, as well as the significant places and events that took place within the area, so that the area can be enjoyed by all. Ensure that development is fully integrated into and informed by the landscape.

For example by:

• Conserving and maintaining evidence of ridge-and-furrow cultivation and important medieval settlement remains, for example at Wistow Hall, Gumley, Knaptoft and Peatling Magna, by working with farmers to avoid damaging cultivation and land management practices.
• Conserving remaining areas of historic designed parkland, typically on the edge of the area and next to the more wooded landscapes, for example around Wistow, Misterton and Cotesbach, by working with landowners to protect important features such as veteran trees and by planting replacement trees of appropriate species in keeping with historic landscape character.
• Maintaining remaining areas where Tudor and Parliamentary enclosure survives, in particular in the east where there is less 20th-century influence and where hedgerows are currently low but well maintained.
• Encouraging the use of traditional ‘Midlands-style’ hedgelaying to manage hedgerows, improving their structure and biodiversity value and strengthening landscape character.
• Maintaining and conserving the nationally important Bosworth Battlefield site by enhancing interpretation and minimising any potential damage caused by inappropriate land management and public access.
• Protecting, conserving and enhancing the fabric and understanding of the historic transport networks through the area, notably the Roman roads, the canal, and associated canal architecture and engineering features such as Foxton Locks and Foxton Inclined Plane.
• Using the understanding and knowledge of the distribution and location of settlements across the area to encourage and enable better- informed and complementary designs for development and urban expansion.
• Encouraging the use of locally sourced building materials in the repair and conservation of notable and historic buildings and in new developments within villages and smaller towns.
• Ensuring that green infrastructure is incorporated into new and existing development, providing accessible greenspace, protecting valuable heritage assets and increasing biodiversity in urban areas.
• Managing and interpreting the area’s geology and geological sites.

SEO 2

SEO 2: Manage, conserve and enhance the woodlands, hedgerows, streams and rivers – particularly the rivers Soar, Sence, Swift and Welland – in both rural and urban areas, to enhance biodiversity and recreation opportunities; improve water quality, flow and availability; benefit soil quality; and limit soil erosion.

For example by:

• Conserving wet valley woods of alder and willow in the principal valleys of the rivers Soar, Sence, Swift and Welland by maintaining a diverse shrub layer, to provide good wildlife habitat and landscape interest.
• Conserving and maintaining water quality by working with farmers and other landowners to reduce diffuse pollution from agriculture and other land uses through best practice land management, such as the use of buffer strip management.
• Seeking to introduce sustainable urban drainage systems in new and existing developments and next to the major roads throughout the area, to help regulate water flows (reducing the risk of flooding in urban areas) and to trap pollutants (preventing them from reaching main rivers and streams).
• Maintaining watercourse corridors as a strategic resource for tourism and recreation, for example by extending informal, small-scale public access where appropriate.
• Maintaining sustainable levels of recreational use of watercourses and waterbodies such as the Grand Union Canal and restored gravel extraction sites, to ensure benefits for water quality, biodiversity and recreation.
• Maintaining and reinstating the traditional practice of pollarding riparian trees (mainly willows).
• Maintaining the linear habitats, particularly the watercourses, which provide movement corridors for declining species such as water vole and also for otter.
• Conserving lowland meadows and pasture within the flood plains, recognising their increasing importance in the management of floodwater, by maintaining traditional management.
• Removing barriers to fish migration and creating formal fish refuge areas where appropriate.
• Encouraging best farming practices to improve soil structure and minimise soil erosion, thus improving water quality.

SEO 3

SEO 3: Increase, manage and enhance the recreational assets, principally the rights of way network, country parks such as Watermead and historic linear features such as the canals. Improve access to these assets and the open countryside from the city of Leicester and surrounding rural communities and provide green infrastructure to help improve people’s health and wellbeing.

For example by:

• Identifying new opportunities for providing recreational assets such as gravel workings and new woodlands. Offer visitors and local communities opportunities to learn more about these assets and get involved through for example, volunteering, while enjoying the health and wellbeing benefits afforded by contact with the natural environment.
• Creating access to high-quality urban greenspace, linking with climate change adaptation, around the larger settlements on the edge of the National Character Area (NCA), in particular to the south of Leicester and the sub-regional centres of Hinckley and Market Harborough, and other locations that are under pressure for development.
• Creating natural links to the wider countryside to encourage the spread of species and thus enhance adaptation to climate change, in particular in the transportation and water corridors and alongside public rights of way such as the National Cycle Routes 6 and 63 and other local circular routes.
• Creating extensive new planting on the edges of residential and other development to mitigate visual impact, including realising the potential for growing energy crops, while avoiding sensitive sites.
• Enabling and encouraging fishing opportunities by improving recreational facilities in places such as Watermead.

SEO 4

SEO 4: Create new habitats where opportunities exist, such as woodlands and wetlands at old gravel extraction sites, to extend, link or buffer areas of existing habitat to reduce the impacts of fragmentation. Manage existing grassland, woodlands, coverts and spinneys that contribute to sense of place, enhancing biodiversity resilience and habitat networks.

For example by:

• Extending links and creating new wildlife corridors with a varied structure and range of habitats, to minimise effects of climate change.
• Creating new and conserving existing notable habitats, in particular lowland wood pasture and parkland, wet woodland and grazing marsh.
• Working with landowners and managers to maintain and enhance existing woods, coverts and spinneys and to plant new woods where appropriate.
• Enhancing and expanding the network of semi-natural habitats that aid the movement of predatory species and bring benefits for pest regulation within food crops, as well as pollination and biodiversity.
• Managing unimproved species-rich grasslands and retaining ridge-and- furrow earthworks for their many functions, including their educational value.
• Encouraging the use, if feasible and appropriate, of Leicestershire sheep as a conservation grazing animal that is well-suited to lowland grazing, encouraging associated local branding and marketing of meat and wool and preserving the genetic diversity of this rare breed.
• Enhancing existing woodlands by removing and controlling invasive sycamore and rhododendron.
• Promoting the management and high-quality restoration of quarry wetlands and the creation of new wetland habitats. Improve interpretation and understanding of the local geological resource.