128 - South Hampshire Lowlands : 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: Promote creative and effective sustainable development – including a well-connected network of high-quality greenspace in and around Southampton, Romsey, Eastleigh and Havant – which benefits local businesses and communities, protects local distinctiveness, encourages public understanding and enjoyment of the natural environment, and helps to mitigate the impacts of climate change.

For example by:

• Working with local authorities, government agencies, local enterprise partnerships and other partners to ensure that economic growth in the South Hampshire Lowlands National Character Area (NCA) recognises and enhances where possible the qualities and ecosystem benefits of the natural environment.
• Promoting the benefits of the natural environment for local communities and visitors in terms of quality of life, health and recreation; and contributing to the mitigation and compensation for adverse impacts on the natural environment.
• Ensuring that development and its associated infrastructure (including light, noise and air pollution) does not damage or intrude on the special qualities of any of the designated sites and protected landscapes that lie within and adjacent to the NCA, for example the New Forest National Park, the Solent and Southampton Water Ramsar site, Solent and Southampton Water Special Protection Area (SPA), Solent Maritime Special Area of Conservation (SAC), River Itchen SAC, Isle of Wight Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), South Downs National Park and Chichester Harbour AONB.
• Ensuring that all new development is informed by an understanding of local character and distinctiveness and conserves significant historic features.
• Encouraging the use of neighbourhood plans and historic landscape character assessments to inform planning decisions.
• Ensuring that all new development meets the highest standards for energy efficiency as set out in the Code for Sustainable Homes (Code for Sustainable Homes, Department for Communities and Local Government, 2006).
• Making all development permeable to wildlife through the use of greenspace and green corridors that can function as ecological networks.
• Encouraging the provision of a strong, coherent green infrastructure network and ensuring that all development meets the Accessible Natural Greenspace Standard (ANGSt).
• Preserving and improving the tranquillity of the NCA, for instance ensuring that intrusion by development is minimised, providing new greenspace and improving the tranquillity of existing greenspace, buffering major roads with hedgerows or trees and encouraging the use of low-noise surfacing on roads.
• Seeking to encourage a softer transition between rural and urban landscapes through the planting of native trees around new development.
• Creating areas of well-managed broadleaved woodland to shield new development and major transport routes such as the M25 and provide corridors for sustainable links such as cycle ways and footpaths while also providing a potential wood fuel resource and buffering from traffic noise.
• Working with local planning authorities and public transport providers to ensure that viable public transport options are in place, particularly in areas of new development, to reduce the pressure of road traffic and reduce the impact of air pollution on European designated sites.

SEO 2

SEO 2: Conserve, manage and enhance the semi-natural habitats of the river valleys, their estuaries and intertidal areas along the coast, to maintain water availability and flow, reduce flooding downstream, improve water quality, and enhance their biodiversity and landscape benefits.

For example by:

• Working with partners, such as the Environment Agency and water companies, to ensure that the planned increase in population does not cause deterioration in water quality or water availability, to maintain supplies of potable water and protect the wildlife that depends on the rivers and wetlands.
• Working with the farming community under the Catchment Sensitive Farming Programme to ensure that agricultural run-off is reduced.
• Encouraging the use of wide buffer strips and planting of hedgerows to prevent or reduce run-off; and improving water quality by reducing the amount of nutrients and silts entering watercourses.
• Working with industries that use the rivers – such as mills, fish farms and watercress farms – to minimise pollution of the rivers Hamble, Itchen, Meon and Test.
• Promoting water efficiency among the wider public, industry, agriculture and users both within the NCA itself and within neighbouring catchment areas.
• Ensuring that any new development is built to the highest water efficiency standards as laid out in the Code for Sustainable Homes.
• Maintaining and managing the open character of the river valleys of the Itchen, Meon and Test to conserve and enhance the long views over the surrounding landscape.
• Promoting awareness among the wider public of the problems of invasive species, supporting local volunteers and working with landowners and partners to control invasive species such as mink, Himalayan balsam, Japanese knotweed and topmouth gudgeon which pose a serious threat to the biodiversity and economic viability of local rivers.
• Linking and extending lowland meadow habitats, where possible, along the rivers which will help to filter pollutants and increase flood water storage capacity as well as support biodiversity and increase habitat for pollinators and pest predators.
• Encouraging, where possible, the restoration of the traditional grazing of the historic watermeadows, particularly along the rivers Test and Itchen, to support biodiversity.
• Encouraging the planting and management of native vegetation and the removal of non-native vegetation alongside rivers to support wildlife such as Atlantic salmon and the southern damselfly.
• Working with landowners and partner bodies to ensure that a proportion of shade is present over key watercourses to prevent overheating during ‘heat waves’.
• Working with the Environment Agency, angling groups and other partners to ensure that vegetation cover is managed for maximum biodiversity benefit while allowing access to the bank for recreational fishing.
• Removing weirs and helping fish to navigate impediments to migration, for instance by installing fish ladders.
• Establishing new plantations in strategic locations to help manage water quality, water flow and soil quality.
• Restoring the natural morphology of rivers – especially along the Test and Itchen – to improve biodiversity and allow the river to channel excess water more efficiently and thus avoid flooding.
• Reconnecting rivers with their flood plains, protecting flood plains from development, and linking them, extending them and improving their condition so that they function effectively.
• Encouraging the careful siting of any development away from areas that are susceptible to fluvial, marine or groundwater flooding.
• Creating new wetland areas throughout both existing and approved new development as part of sustainable urban drainage systems that link into the heart of urban areas, significantly contributing to the alleviation of surface water flooding.
• Encouraging the use of permeable surfaces, green roofs and rain gardens in new development to reduce the risk of overland flows.
• Ensuring that the needs for high tide roost sites of birds and other needs on the Solent and Southampton Water SPA are taken into consideration when any development is planned.
• Encourage research within the Lower Test Valley Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) to help better understand the changes that may be occurring due to sea level rise and how the SSSI may best be managed to adapt to them.
• Work with partners and stakeholders for the Lower Test Valley SSSI to agree climate change adaptation actions and manage intertidal habitat roll-back.

SEO 3

SEO 3: Protect, manage and enhance the area’s historic well-wooded character – including its ancient semi-natural woodlands, wood pasture and hedgerows – to increase biomass provision, link and strengthen habitats for wildlife, and improve recreational opportunities.

For example by:

• Linking areas of woodland, in particular ancient woodland, to improve landscape character and resilience and to reduce fragmentation.
• Strengthening ecological networks by seeking opportunities to link areas of woodland, particularly ancient woodland, through hedgerows and new plantations of trees native to the area.
• Seeking the replacement of conifers on ancient woodland sites with broadleaved trees indigenous to the area, to enhance biodiversity and landscape while also aiding climate regulation and providing a local source of wood products.
• Restoring and maintaining areas of wood pasture for their biodiversity value such as lichen and bryophyte communities.
• Improving the recreational experience of the Forest of Bere so that it can offer an attractive alternative to the neighbouring national parks by providing adventure activities, such as wild camping, as well as ensuring that it provides areas for quiet recreation.
• Promoting a market within the NCA for biomass fuels from locally grown sustainable wood.
• Encouraging local landowners to actively manage broadleaved woodland for woodland products.
• Managing, restoring and replanting the network of hedgerows and field boundary trees to strengthen field boundary patterns.
• Preserving remnant historic field systems, such as medieval assart fields, where appropriate through agri-environment schemes.
• Promoting interest and understanding in the history and land use of the Forest of Bere among the wider public.
• Improving and encouraging access to the Forest of Bere through sustainable transport such as better cycle and pedestrian links from urban areas.
• Ensuring that the rural character of the Forest of Bere is maintained and enhanced, for instance by minimising ‘street clutter’ and, where possible, reducing light pollution and other intrusion.

SEO 4

SEO 4: Conserve, manage, link and enhance the traditional mosaic of semi-natural grassland habitats – including chalk grasslands, watermeadows and unimproved grassland – for the benefits they provide in protecting and regulating soils and water, climate change adaptation as well as recreational opportunities and improved biodiversity.

For example by:

• Restoring a regular grazing regime to the chalk grassland at Portsdown Hill to maintain and improve its landscape and biodiversity interest.
• Encouraging, where possible, the reversion to grassland from arable across Portsdown Hill to restore and link the chalk habitat – particularly on the south escarpment – to safeguard important biodiversity interest, such as the early gentian (an endemic species) and assemblages of rare butterflies, as well as protect the shallow, chalky soils.
• Promoting the reversion of arable to grassland and scrub removal where current land cover threatens the integrity of historic features such as important earthworks and remains, including bronze-age barrows and Saxon burial grounds on Portsdown Hill and remnants of medieval field systems on the river valley sides and bottoms such as those along the Itchen.
• Improving recreational access to Portsdown Hill and encouraging sympathetic use by local residents.
• Creating awareness among the local population of Portsdown Hill’s historical legacy.
• Promoting the 19th-century forts on Portsdown Hill more widely as venues for day trips.
• Linking and re-establishing, where possible, areas of lowland heathland particularly around Baddesley, Hamble, Netley, Shedfield and Wickham commons.
• Conserving and restoring remnant ancient/historic field systems, such as assart fields found in the Forest of Bere, through traditional hedgerow boundary management and replanting, by encouraging uptake of agri-environment schemes.
• Linking and extending the mosaic of semi-natural grassland within the Forest of Bere to reduce fragmentation; and encouraging reversion to grassland from arable, where possible.
• Exploring the possibility of developer funding for establishing suitable alternative natural greenspace (SANGS) to relieve visitor pressure on the coastal sites and minimise the disturbance to the birds.
• Restoring grassland where possible for green infrastructure.
• Encouraging the restoration and creation of new ponds through agri- environment schemes.
• Encouraging the introduction of arable field margins and buffer strips on arable land to support pollinators and pest predators and to increase biodiversity.