113 - North Kent Plain : 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 character and long tradition of a farmed landscape, creating habitats to establish more resilient and coherent ecological networks within the farmed and peri-urban areas, benefitting biodiversity and geodiversity, and helping to regulate water and soil quality. Protect traditional practices including the longstanding associations of the fruit belt, maintaining a strong sense of place and reinforcing Kent’s reputation as the Garden of England.

For example by:

• Conserving the dispersed rural settlement pattern of small nucleated villages on higher ground and surrounding fields, set among a historic network of narrow lanes.
• Supporting the maintenance of a diverse farmed landscape, incorporating horticulture. Safeguarding high-quality agricultural land and encouraging land management practices which protect soil assets and the benefits they provide.
• Where they exist, maintaining and managing traditional orchards – for their heritage value, genetic diversity and local distinctiveness. Managing the poplar and alder shelterbelts that enclose orchards and horticultural crops around Canterbury and Faversham, to benefit biodiversity and the landscape.
• Conserving and enhancing tranquillity within the National Character Area (NCA) and, where appropriate, planting broadleaved woodland to screen development while simultaneously linking habitats, improving ecological connectivity and resilience, and providing a source of local community green space.
• Restoring hedgerow boundaries, especially where they will help to impede cross-land flows within the Stour priority catchment and the catchments of the Darent/Cray and Medway. This will aid improvements in water quality, as well as restoring the character of native hedgerows and traditional field patterns – especially where lost in peri-urban areas.
• Adopting a landscape-scale approach to strengthening ecological networks. In particular, creating arable field margins and conservation headlands to help support important wintering and breeding populations of farmland birds, while increasing the habitat available for pollinators and rare arable plants. There will also be benefits for water quality and the regulation of soil erosion.
• Working in partnership and across sectors to improve the quality of surface water and groundwater within the NCA – especially water that currently fails to meet Water Framework Directive (WFD) objectives for good ecological status (surface water) or good status (groundwater).
• Managing ditches to retain historic field boundaries within the Chislet Marshes/Ash Levels/Stodmarsh areas, benefitting biodiversity by maintaining an important refuge for water voles and rare snails.
• Conserving and managing the historic assets of the area – both above and below ground. Seeking to improve management, to protect archaeological remains (notably Roman). Conserving the historic parklands and their key habitats (such as veteran trees), supporting succession planting programmes, informed by the assessment of the historic design and significance of the parkland. Further, conserving vernacular and traditional built features such as historic farmsteads and coast houses, military remains and other historic urban features. Where appropriate, improving access to the historical assets of the NCA for research and tourism, and to connect communities with their local heritage.

SEO 2

SEO 2: Plan for and manage the effects of coastal change, by allowing the operation of natural coastal processes and improving the sustainability of current management practices, to maintain and enhance the local landscape character and the area’s biodiversity assets. This can lead to habitat creation, flood-risk reduction to built-up areas, and opportunities for recreational activity.

For example by:

• Maintaining opportunities for the natural regeneration of coastal features (including chalk cliffs, intertidal sand, mudflats and salt marsh) within the context of the policies identified by the Shoreline Management Plan, to help alleviate coastal erosion risk and adapt to the impacts of climate change. Maintaining important coastal geological exposures and geomorphological features will also benefit geodiversity. Research indicates that intertidal habitats such as mudflats and salt marshes, can play an important role in regulating climate change through carbon storage.
• Identifying further opportunities to create compensation habitats for those lost to ‘coastal squeeze’, aiming to ensure no net loss of habitat, benefitting biodiversity and the regulation of coastal erosion and flooding.
• Achieving good condition and expanding cliff-top calcareous grassland on the Thanet Chalk, benefiting biodiversity and enhancing adaptation to climate change, with new areas targeted to replace those lost to cliff retreat.
• Protecting the historic environment along the coast, notably the Roman Saxon Shore forts at Richborough and Reculver, as well as the military remains including the naval dockyards at Chatham. Seeking to enhance the educational and recreational opportunities associated with these historic features.
• Identifying opportunities to improve coastal access, strengthening the existing network and extending it (where appropriate) to link routes with urban centres, historic features and other paths. This will provide a high- quality recreational resource for both residents and tourists. Further, identifying opportunities to encourage sustainable tourism, particularly for its socio-economic benefits.

SEO 3

SEO 3: Protect the distinct wooded areas of the landscape, particularly through the management of nationally important, ancient semi-natural woodlands, increasing the area of broadleaved woodland where appropriate, while increasing the connectivity of the mosaic of associated habitats; notably wooded heath and semi-improved grasslands and enhancing the recreational resource.

For example by:

• Maintaining and restoring active management of the internationally important Blean complex, north-west of Canterbury. This is one of the largest complexes of ancient semi-natural woodland in England. Expanding and connecting nature reserves across the area (including wooded heath, grassland and wetland areas) will further benefit wildlife and landscape character, as well as soil and climate regulation. Recreational opportunities, biomass production from traditionally- managed woodlands and enhanced adaptation to climate change will also result.
• Maintaining and restoring other localised ancient woodland blocks and small farm woodlands, conserving the integrity of woodlands and managing them as single units (by coppicing where appropriate) to derive the benefits described above.
• Thickening and expanding scattered shelterbelts, expanding around development to enhance their screening function (where appropriate).
• Seeking opportunities to revert plantations of conifers on ancient woodland sites to mixed native broadleaved species.
• Considering small-scale woodland creation where appropriate, for example where it buffers existing woodlands and/or contributes to habitat networks. Seeking to optimise the multiple benefits (social, economic and environmental) that woodlands and trees can provide as part of green infrastructure in urban areas.

SEO 4

SEO 4: Protect and enhance the strong character and heritage of the urban areas. Plan for the creation of significant new areas of green space and green corridors to provide a framework for new and existing development in urban areas and along major transport routes.

For example by:

• Creating or safeguarding extensive areas of multi-functional green space – within and surrounding both towns and identified new development areas. These areas should include attractive new wetlands that form part of sustainable urban drainage systems and link into the heart of urban areas as part of green infrastructure planning.
• Targeted planting of areas of broadleaved woodland, building the urban and peri-urban green infrastructure around towns where appropriate – particularly Dartford, Gravesend and Medway, but also Bromley and Bexley. These woodlands may provide a screening function and a further recreational resource, as well as a local source of wood fuel (where managed through coppicing). In addition, conserving the existing urban treescape and seeking opportunities for urban tree planting, helping to regulate climate change.
• Creating community allotments and potentially developing large community orchards on the edge of urban areas.
• Supporting the design of landscapes associated with new development and green infrastructure within Greater London.
• Conserving Canterbury’s historic character and setting, retaining long views to the cathedral (a World Heritage Site), and maintaining a strong sense of place and history.
• Protecting, celebrating and promoting the heritage of the urban areas to the west of the NCA, including the strong maritime and military associations of the Medway and its significant role in the area’s industrial past, present and future. Engaging communities with their local history and strengthening the physical links with the important historic landscapes that surround them.
• Seeking to maintain and enhance areas of open countryside in the heavily urbanised west of the NCA, to preserve the distinct settlement pattern.
• Restoring and appropriately managing disused mineral workings and landfill sites, integrating them into the landscape through the extensive creation of semi-natural habitats (benefitting landscape and biodiversity), while retaining exposures of geological importance and providing a recreational resource.
• Maintaining important inland geology exposed in pits and quarries, for example the dry mineral workings at Swanscombe, helping to promote an appreciation and understanding of the geodiversity of the NCA, and connecting communities with their local heritage.
• Ensuring that development and its associated infrastructure does not intrude on the special qualities of the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) to the south and landscape character within the AONB and its setting should be conserved, restored, reinforced or created as appropriate to reflect the ambitions of the Kent Downs AONB Management Plan.

Additional opportunity 1

Additional opportunity 1: Plan for a landscape-scale restoration of the fragmented wetland landscape of the Stour valley and its tributaries, while further managing the NCA’s rivers and other wetland habitats, bringing about multiple benefits including climate regulation, biodiversity and improved water quality.

For example by:

• Adopting a landscape-scale approach to restore, create and re-link remaining wetland habitats (including flood plain and coastal grazing marsh, reedbeds, fens and wet woodland) throughout the Lower Stour Wetlands Biodiversity Opportunity Area (including the Stodmarsh Special Area of Conservation) and the area identified under the Wetland Vision. This will create a robust wildlife network that significantly enhances adaptation to climate change, benefitting landscape and biodiversity while also storing flood waters to aid flood alleviation, improving water quality and increasing carbon storage.
• Restoring natural river morphology where it is of particular benefit to biodiversity to do so, bringing rivers back into continuity with their flood plains and recreating backwaters as a refuge for aquatic species in times of drought. Allowing the seasonal inundation of identified flood plain pastures and wetland habitats, as identified in the River Stour Catchment Flood Management Plan, while also enhancing green infrastructure and footpath access in urban areas (for example around the Cray, Ravensbourne and Darent rivers).
• Creating wide grassland buffer strips to either side of watercourses and running across arable slopes, to provide a buffer to soil erosion and nutrient run-off (especially within the catchment of the Stour, as well as the Cray, Darent and Medway rivers), further aiding a reduction in soil erosion and an improvement in water quality. Encouraging land management practices which enhance soils (such as increasing the levels of organic matter) and improve resilience to climate change.
• Where appropriate, encouraging the fencing of watercourses and alternative drinking provision for livestock – to reduce faecal matter entering rivers. This will reduce the levels of faecal bacteria reaching the WFD-protected Stour Estuary and having a negative impact on the shellfish waters and on the quality of the shellfish flesh. Buffer strips will also aid the reduction of run-off from muck applications, and will hence help to reduce bacteria from faecal matter reaching the rivers – with consequent improvements for water quality.

Additional opportunity 2

Additional opportunity 2: Plan for a large-scale improvement in access and recreation provision within the Thames Gateway area, and seek opportunities for access improvements throughout the landscape.

For example by:

• Creating extensive areas of quality green space as part of the Green Grid, providing a continuous network of linked and accessible green space extending from east London to the east of Sittingbourne.
• Creating key recreational nodes for informal recreation, serving a wide range of needs linked to the rights of way network and providing a safe and inviting recreational environment for families.
• Providing sustainable transport links between urban centres and recreation provision in both the wider NCA and the AONB to the south, focusing on a reduction in car-dependency.
• Creating a cohesive network of permissive access throughout the landscape, linking especially to towns and villages, as well as to the North Downs Way, coastal routes and other areas of interest (such as the Blean complex), promoting sustainable access for a wide range of users.