1 - North Northumberland Coastal 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: Improve public enjoyment and understanding of this wild coastal landscape, enabling people to experience the peace and beauty of the area and learn more about its coastal processes and biological, geological and heritage assets while managing visitor pressure to conserve the highly valued tranquillity and protect the sensitive semi-natural habitats and species found there.

For example by:

• Encouraging low-impact activities such as walking and wildlife watching that directly connect people with the natural assets of the area but taking into account the impacts of increased numbers of visitors on wildlife and habitats.
• Encouraging research to quantify and understand the cumulative impacts on wildlife of disturbance from visitors and activities such as bait-digging.
• Seeking opportunities to increase public awareness and understanding of the impacts of disturbance on sensitive species such as overwintering waders, and managing visitor pressure to minimise this.
• Seeking opportunities to preserve and restore more historic sites, including preserving sites and features associated with the industrial use of geodiversity such as Beadnell and Seahouses lime kilns and the whinstone chippings silo base at Craster Harbour, providing imaginative interpretation of the landscape and its many features to interpret this legacy for the understanding and enjoyment of all.
• Encouraging the identification and designation of Local Geological Sites and promoting the use of key geological sites as an educational and research resource.
• Improving access to and interpretation of geological sites and features, including designated sites and quarries, and exploring the possibility of geo-trails, to enhance the public’s understanding and enjoyment of the area, helping to link people to the landscape.
• Maintaining the character of historic villages and towns and of vernacular buildings and sandstone walls, using local stone in restoration where possible, to reinforce links with the underlying geology and strengthen sense of place.
• Enhancing the footpath and cycle way networks and providing opportunities for a range of abilities, including improving crossings of the A1 and East Coast Main Line and difficult river crossings, and addressing gaps in the bridleway network while preventing damage to habitats and wildlife.
• Supporting the implementation of the England Coastal Path to provide high-quality coastal access along the entire length of coast.
• Enhancing recreational facilities where appropriate but managing recreational use to avoid the disturbance of the most sensitive habitats and species by increasing public awareness and attempting to encourage use of less vulnerable areas.
• Sensitively managing visitor access and recreational facilities to avoid loss of tranquillity through the careful planning of transport routes, provision of public transport and cycle routes to minimise private car use, and design and management of public access routes and infrastructure.
• Continuing to address the problems of litter on the coast, both litter dropped by visitors and that deposited by maritime currents, but without removing the strandline.
• Increasing public awareness of the mechanisms and problems of spreading invasive non-native species such as pirri-pirri burr.

SEO 2

SEO 2: Conserve the special qualities of the coast and offshore islands, enabling natural coastal processes to operate, protecting nationally important geological features, and protecting and expanding the nationally and internationally important habitats found there including coastal sand dune systems, intertidal mudflats and coastal salt marsh.

For example by:

• Protecting the undeveloped coast, ensuring that the impact of new developments on views, landscape character, tranquillity and light pollution is carefully considered and minimised, particularly in the case of vertical structures, and taking into account the sensitivity and capacity of areas for development as identified in the Northumberland Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty Landscape Sensitivity and Capacity Study.
• Conserving and enhancing the dramatic and varied coastline which provides important and distinctive habitats that support internationally important seabird colonies by allowing the natural dynamic coastal processes to operate.
• Protecting and enhancing nationally important geological features.
• Protecting the internationally important intertidal habitats such as intertidal mudflats, coastal salt marsh and eelgrass beds around Lindisfarne by improving the water quality of the coastal streams and allowing natural processes to operate.
• Seeking opportunities to allow for the natural roll-back of sand dunes, particularly between Scremerston and Lindisfarne, by negotiating the reversion of arable land to grassland.
• Encouraging sustainable grazing of dune systems, salt marsh and coastal grasslands by native livestock breeds where appropriate.
• Protecting and restoring areas of fragmented coastal heathland.
• Adopting effective visitor management to minimise the erosion of sensitive habitats such as dune systems caused by recreational activities, and providing interpretation to improve public awareness of the sensitivity of these systems.
• Seeking opportunities to create or expand coastal salt marsh habitat and create a more resilient shoreline by negotiating tidal flooding of farmland through managed realignment, particularly to the north of Holy Island and behind Beadnell Bay, in line with the Shoreline Management Plan.
• Exploring opportunities to compensate in the wider area for the future loss of rocky shore through coastal squeeze as identified in the Shoreline Management Plan.
• Working with farmers and landowners to improve water quality, particularly of the coastal streams and the area around Lindisfarne, by reducing diffuse pollution from agriculture, in particular through establishing permanent grassland field margins and reedbeds.
• Ensuring that sustainable fishing practices are used to maintain and restore marine ecosystems.
• Ensuring that the economic and environmental importance of the coast and offshore fisheries is taken into account in the oil pollution emergency planning process.
• Monitoring and controlling non-native invasive species.
• Conserving and enhancing the coastal villages and towns which are integral to the character of the coast and are popular tourist destinations, working to secure a sustainable future for communities dependent on inshore fisheries, and planning for natural adaptation to coastal processes where maintaining defences is not sustainable.

SEO 3

SEO 3: Conserve and enhance semi-natural inland habitats such as Whin grassland, native woodland and wetlands, improving their connectivity and resilience to climate change, benefiting climate regulation, water quality and soil quality and reinforcing sense of place.

For example by:

• Seeking opportunities to restore and expand semi-natural grasslands, heathlands, wetlands and scrub habitats, aiming to re-establish a fringe of semi-natural vegetation to buffer the coastal habitats from the effects of cultivation and creating links to the larger areas of semi-natural habitat in the Northumberland Sandstone Hills.
• Seeking opportunities to restore flood plain grassland to re-establish a more natural river morphology, aid infiltration, slow run-off and manage flood risk while providing an important habitat resource.
• Encouraging the establishment of reedbeds to improve water storage capacity and reduce diffuse pollution of watercourses.
• Working with landowners and quarry operators to protect and restore existing Whin grassland sites through scrub control and reinstating sustainable grazing where appropriate, and encouraging the restoration of former quarry sites to Whin grassland.
• Encouraging wet grassland management which will benefit waders, particularly around Newham Fen Special Area of Conservation, to improve the wider hydrological unit.
• Seeking opportunities to expand and link woodland fragments, particularly restoring woodland along watercourses, including enhancing the wooded character of the Aln and Coquet river valleys, and within the area around Howick.
• Bringing existing woodland under management and seeking opportunities for small-scale planting of deciduous species to generate a local supply of wood fuel.

SEO 4

SEO 4: Manage and enhance the farmed environment to secure viable and sustainable farming, improving the water quality of the rivers, coast and Fell Sandstone aquifer, reducing soil erosion, strengthening landscape character, conserving archaeology and historic buildings, supporting the farmland birds and overwintering shorebird populations that are dependent on this area, and improving the connectivity and heterogeneity of this landscape.

For example by:

• Promoting best practice in soils, nutrient and pesticide management to reduce diffuse pollution from agriculture, including encouraging farmers to more accurately match nutrient inputs to needs, improving facilities for the storage of slurry and manure, managing stock movements and riparian grazing to avoid poaching and erosion of the banks of watercourses, and managing the timing of operations to protect soil condition.
• Encouraging especially careful soil and nutrient management where soils overlying the Fell Sandstone aquifer are particularly thin and vulnerable.
• Encouraging the restoration and reinstatement of hedgerows to enhance biodiversity value, improve landscape permeability, reduce wind erosion of soils and reinforce landscape character.
• Encouraging the establishment of permanent grass margins to reduce run-off to watercourses, provide wildlife corridors, benefit pollinators and connect fragmented semi-natural habitats.
• Encouraging the use of reedbeds, settling ponds and wetland areas to reduce diffuse pollution and enhance the biodiversity value of the farmed environment.
• Establishing and managing areas of permanent grassland, scrub and woodland along watercourses; the area inland of Holy Island has been identified as a priority area in the Woodland for Water Opportunity Mapping where woodland planting should significantly benefit water quality.
• Encouraging measures to support pollinators and farmland birds such as sowing wild bird seed and nectar flower mixes, establishing cereal headlands and cutting hedgerows later to provide food sources during the winter.
• Encouraging the use of overwintered stubbles and temporary grass, particularly along the coastal fringe, to benefit overwintering shorebirds such as light-bellied Brent goose.
• Promoting the retention of permanent pasture and ensuring that the management of pastures and meadows encourages the build-up of organic matter.
• Exploring opportunities for better management of below-ground archaeology on arable land, such as the establishment of permanent grassland, shallow cultivation or minimum tillage agriculture, and encouraging uptake of agri-environment schemes to fund such work.
• Promoting sustainable use of water including the use of winter storage reservoirs, ensuring that these positively contribute to landscape character and enhance biodiversity interest.
• Working with property owners to reduce point source pollution from septic tanks, particularly above the Fell Sandstone aquifer and along the coastal streams into Budle Bay.
• Promoting the development of supply chains and markets for high-quality local produce from traditional breeds, encouraging a green economy that supports local tourism, and capitalising on the environmental value of local breeds and their heritage and genetic value.