109 - Midvale Ridge : 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: Maintain the historic environment and cultural character of the Midvale Ridge by ensuring that permitted development is well integrated to preserve local distinctiveness and sense of place and providing green space and recreational opportunities for the health and wellbeing of residents and visitors.

For example by:

• Using an understanding of the area’s traditional and historic architecture, and its distinct patterns of village-based settlement, to inform appropriate conservation and use of historic buildings, and to plan for and inspire any environmentally beneficial new development which makes a positive contribution to local character.
• Preserving the characteristic network of winding sunken lanes and significant historic hedgerows by working with landowners to sustainably manage these features for their contribution to landscape character and also as wildlife corridors.
• Encouraging the use of traditional building materials such as locally quarried limestone or brick and red tile or thatch on the eastern ridge, and local Cornbrash or Corallian Limestone with stone slate roofs in the west.
• Protecting historic earthworks and monuments, such as iron-age and Romano-British settlement sites and nationally important ridge and furrow, by encouraging reversion from arable to grassland where appropriate.
• Encouraging better management and raising awareness of the area’s heritage assets.
• Encouraging the restoration and management of historical parklands for their biodiversity and cultural interest.
• Promoting the restoration and maintenance of historic buildings such as windmills.
• Ensuring that the extensive views across the surrounding countryside are maintained.
• Promoting the vision of the Great Western Community Forest plan to enhance recreational and biodiversity opportunities.
• Encouraging the use of the Accessible Natural Greenspace Standard and community engagement in the planning of new developments and green infrastructure strategies to ensure that people have places to enjoy nature and experience the health, wellbeing and educational benefits that green space brings.
• Promoting green space for landscape setting as well as other benefits such as water regulation and local provision of wood fuel.
• Promoting sustainable development principles for new development associated with transport corridors and other urban and industrial expansion which make provision for green infrastructure, address flood risk mitigation, avoid any damaging impact on biodiversity and are considerate towards the character of the Midvale Ridge.
• Ensuring that development is well designed to minimise visual intrusion and noise and light pollution upon the wider landscape.

SEO 2

SEO 2: Manage, enhance and expand the valuable semi-natural habitats of the Midvale Ridge such as fens, grassland and calcareous heathland to benefit biodiversity, prevent soil erosion, improve water regulation and quality, support pollinators and protect and enhance wildlife corridors.

For example by:

• Managing the semi-natural habitats of the Midvale Ridge to maintain and enhance their conservation interest so that species of national and regional significance are safeguarded and where possible increased.
• Seeking to reduce habitat fragmentation by linking, re-creating and extending semi-natural habitats wherever possible and working with local planning authorities to minimise further fragmentation.
• Promoting awareness of the importance of the habitats and rare species of the Midvale Ridge among landowners and the wider public and providing advice to landowners on appropriate management.
• Promoting research and interpretation of flushes and fens and the species that they support to identify the most appropriate management practices.
• Working with farmers and landowners to establish sustainable land management practices in the areas surrounding important semi-natural habitat such as fen to regulate water quality, prevent soil erosion and encourage pollinators, such as providing flower-rich wide buffer strips, beetle banks and infield grass areas.
• Advising the Environment Agency, local authorities and landowners to ensure that water abstraction has the minimum impact on designated wetland habitat, minimising its effect on biodiversity and water quality.
• Working with local authorities and extraction companies to ensure that mineral extraction is considered and managed sustainably to avoid detrimental impacts on semi-natural habitats, for example through interruption of groundwater flows. Where possible, encourage the linking and extension of semi-natural habitats through the restoration of exhausted minerals sites.

SEO 3

SEO 3: Manage and enhance the woodland cover and expand areas of native broadleaved woodland to benefit landscape character and biodiversity, for carbon sequestration, to prevent soil erosion, improve water quality, supply renewable fuel and to provide access and recreation opportunities.

For example by:

• Ensuring that all woodlands particularly those of high conservation value, including wet woodland and ancient woodland sites, are managed appropriately to maintain and enhance their wildlife value, for example by restoring rotational coppice management where suitable to provide a source of biomass fuel and good habitat for woodland butterflies.
• Promoting opportunities for biomass energy provision with local markets, particularly wood fuel, to support the local economy while improving biodiversity.
• Supporting the Forestry Commission and other land managers in developing a co-ordinated approach to deer management to enhance biodiversity, sense of place and tranquillity.
• Encouraging the planting of new native woodland where this fits in with local character and will extend or link existing woodlands to prevent fragmentation, provide ecological networks, aid the prevention of soil erosion by reducing overland flows and improve water quality (by absorbing nutrients and particulates).
• Promoting the gradual restoration of Plantations on Ancient Woodland Sites with indigenous species, where possible.
• Strengthening ecological networks by linking patches of woodland with hedgerows, where possible, especially where the woodland is on an ancient woodland site.
• Promoting the restoration and expansion of woodland within the Great Western Community Forest, managed through community involvement to contribute especially to the sustainable development of Swindon, providing a local recreational, educational, wildlife and biomass resource.
• Maximising the opportunities for people to increase their knowledge and understanding of local woodlands, to take part in their management and to enjoy visiting them for recreation and health purposes while at the same time safeguarding biodiversity.

SEO 4

SEO 4: Maintain and enhance the National Character Area’s internationally important geological heritage for the educational benefits it provides, its contribution to a sense of place and history and to increase recreational opportunities.

For example by:

• Promoting awareness of the National Character Area’s significant Cretaceous and Jurassic geological heritage among educational establishments and the wider public to link the local community to their geological heritage.
• Linking the rights of way network, particularly from Oxford, to geological sites to increase health and educational opportunities and to promote a sense of place and sense of history.
• Working with landowners to ensure that important geological sites are appropriately managed, for instance keeping the faces of important exposures clear of vegetation so that they can be easily studied.
• Working with landowners to encourage access for geologists to working quarries.
• Identifying opportunities to promote geological sites as visitor destinations.
• Seeking to ensure that access to important exposures for research is maintained once quarries are no longer in use.
• Planning for the restoration of quarries and mineral workings for educational use and biodiversity benefit once they are no longer in use.
• Working with quarry owners, operators and local geology groups to record features of interest during mineral extraction and quarrying.