138 - Weymouth 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: Conserve and promote the Weymouth Lowlands’ historic landscape and geodiversity including the Jurassic Coast, The Fleet and Chesil Beach, the suite of national and local geological sites and the distinctive relationship between geology, coastal geomorphology, soils, landform and land use, promoting opportunities for recreation in the area and interpretation of the unique features while also ensuring that the interplay between biodiversity, geomorphology and land use is complementary.

For example by:

• Conserving, managing and enhancing the nationally and locally important geological and geomorphological sites and features which represent the characteristic Jurassic sequences of the area, many of which are exposed at the coast through active cliff movement.
• Ensuring that the natural function of coastal geomorphological processes is unimpeded and that intervention measures are adopted only where essential, especially along Chesil Beach.
• Continuing to develop detailed understanding of coastal geomorphological processes to inform development and planning, particularly around Burton Bradstock and Weymouth where development pressures are greatest.
• Continuing to provide high-quality interpretation and engagement activities to local people and visitors to the Jurassic Coast to highlight its importance on an international and local scale.
• Managing the coastal strip and hinterland to ensure that new or existing developments neither impact upon the setting or visual coherence of the coast nor pose a future threat to continued unimpeded natural processes.
• Developing and providing interpretation for sites which illustrates the relationship between underlying geology and soils, thus providing a link with historical and present biodiversity, land use and management, and aiding interpretation of the wider landscape.
• Ensuring that measures are taken to maintain or bring about favourable condition of the geological Sites of Special Scientific Interest running the length of the coast and that the sites of local geological importance are appropriately managed and, where possible, accessible for study.
• Protecting important features for geological/geomorphological interpretation from inappropriate changes in land use, for example planting woodland on the cliffs around Osmington.
• Seeking to ensure that this resource is available as an accessible scientific and educational asset to study stratigraphy, palaeontology and the relationship between geology, biodiversity, landscape and building stone, and in particular characteristic features such as Chesil Beach.
• Conserving the visually outstanding and unspoilt coastline.
• Ensuring that the policies outlined in the Jurassic Coast and Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) Management Plans are implemented.
• Utilising the Dorset AONB Landscape Character Assessment and Management Guidance (Conserving Character) to inform agricultural management and development choices.
• Planning for Weymouth’s continued protection from rising, stormier seas while managing coastal processes in as natural a state as possible as set out in the Shoreline Management Plan.
• Maintaining multi-user paths and improving connectivity between settlements, both within and outside the area, using and extending the existing network of public rights of way and links to and from the South West Coast Path National Trail, Jurassic Coast, Weymouth and other assets.
• Providing ongoing, high-quality access to the coast, via the South West Coast Path, and ensuring that inland linkages to the public rights of way network are maintained and, where appropriate, enhanced.
• Developing new permissive access where appropriate to historical and geological sites and other areas of interest as part of a cohesive network of inspiring access provision.
• Maintaining the South West Coast Path National Trail and its corridors to the highest standards of management and visitor experience while taking account of dynamic cliff systems in order to provide the focus for both environmental connectivity and a corridor of interest of cultural, historical and environmental significance.
• Supporting the role of the Dorset AONB and Jurassic Coast Unit activities to improve wider partnership in delivery and management across the AONB and the National Character Area (NCA), such as improving access, signage and interpretation to ensure a high-quality visitor experience.
• Continuing to develop, with other partners, the Natural Weymouth and Portland Partnership and build on the 2012 Olympic Legacy to promote Weymouth and Portland’s natural environment.

SEO 2

SEO 2: Protect, manage and enhance the distinctive farmed landscape, retaining the balance of productive mixed farmed landscape and diversity of habitats and associated species. Create connecting corridors of calcareous grasslands at the coast and on limestone ridges, manage the diverse range of intimate wooded pockets, wetlands, coastal habitats and fens for their contribution to sense of place, and their positive role in reducing soil erosion and enhancing water quality.

For example by:

• Assisting the maintenance of distinctive farming patterns across the area, and encouraging initiatives which seek to support sustainable agriculture while retaining a mixed farming pattern which currently supports the mix of habitats and species found in the area, and utilising farming methods which reduce sediment, phosphate and nitrate pollution.
• Understanding the systemic changes which may be occurring in the agricultural system of the area. Working with farmers, land managers and communities to positively shape the way in which land is managed into the future, innovating and diversifying to maintain the agricultural economy while simultaneously preserving and positively enhancing the physical, ecological and historic landscape that is so highly valued by local people and visitors alike.
• Helping land managers to develop profitable and sustainable agricultural systems to provide sufficient stock to effectively graze this and the adjacent NCAs’ large areas of semi-natural grassland.
• Identifying opportunities for managing, restoring and creating areas of limestone grassland, maritime cliff and slope habitats, springline flushes and fens, pockets of woodland and wetlands to strengthen the connectivity of these habitats across the area, supporting species movement and for the benefits that they will bring in managing soil erosion and water quality and flow.
• Managing the diverse range of intimate wooded pockets, wetlands, coastal habitats and fens for their contribution to biodiversity and sense of place, and their positive role in reducing soil erosion and enhancing water quality.
• Understanding and promoting the services provided through specific management of ecosystems by land managers and seeking financial mechanisms which reasonably reward and incentivise those practices.
• Maintaining, restoring and sympathetically enhancing the network of small woodlands and copses typical of the Bride Valley and Osmington, utilising their potential for wood fuel and to help to manage soil erosion in order to bring them into positive management.
• Maintaining and reinstating hedgerow management, including laying and coppicing existing hedgerows on the steeper slopes and in valley bottoms, to retain these important landscape features for the future and safeguard their role in supporting the biodiversity of the area; assisting in the reduction of soil erosion by slowing cross-land movement of soils,
  nutrients and water (encouraging coppice residues to be used as a source of low-carbon fuel); and planting new hedgerow trees where appropriate and where they do not restrict current open views.
• Maintaining and restoring the network of drystone walls found on the steeper ground and in the Bride Valley, and the skills to do this, and the resulting field patterns of land use, reinforcing a clear sense of place and history and retaining these important landscape features which also provide a rich wildlife habitat.
• Encouraging land use which maintains long views along the coast and ridges and headlands, especially of places such as St Catherine’s Chapel, Chesil Beach and The Fleet.
• Protecting the contrasts in character between ridge, slope, valley and coast by using their defining characteristics to inform new development, land management, access opportunities and woodland creation initiatives, particularly through the use of agri-environment schemes.
• Maintaining and promoting biodiversity interest which extends into the marine environment, including reefs found offshore and on the edge of the Portland Special Area of Conservation which borders this area.

SEO 3

SEO 3: Protect and manage the rich heritage located within the NCA and the Dorset AONB, engaging both visitors and local communities in understanding the relationship between the historic environment, geodiversity and biodiversity and the role that this has played in shaping the landscape of today.

For example by:

• Encouraging arable reversion to grassland where appropriate, and sensitive scrub removal where current landcover and use threaten the integrity of important earthworks and remains, both buried and visible, including Neolithic long barrows, bronze-age round barrows, Roman remains, medieval settlements and Second World War remains.
• Managing the levels of grazing on historic features to prevent poaching and erosion damage on the one hand and ensuring that scrub encroachment is prevented on the other.
• Maintaining the nucleated settlement pattern of small villages in valleys and isolated farmsteads and manor houses, further characterised by fine churches, a strong vernacular architecture and a small network of roads.
• Ensuring that the wealth of heritage assets, including above-ground and buried archaeological features such as earthwork remains, Roman remains, abandoned villages and traditional farm buildings found across the area, are protected, conserved and enhanced, and are effectively and traditionally managed where necessary.
• Conserving and interpreting archaeological earthworks and sub-surface archaeology, while recognising the potential for undiscovered remains.
• Using an understanding of the area’s traditional and historical architecture, and its distinct patterns of settlement, to inform the appropriate conservation of historical buildings, and to plan for and inspire any environmentally beneficial new development which makes a positive contribution to local character.
• Promoting access for all to the natural environment across the area, managing access in a way which balances the desire of people to enjoy and experience the area while preventing damage to assets; making the most of natural, historical, inspirational and tranquil places that are available to all, particularly incorporating sustainable multi-user access to and from the South West Coast Path National Trail and from Weymouth, particularly along the Lorton Valley.
• Encouraging the continued use of local stone as a building material in existing and new drystone wall field boundaries, new developments and conservation projects to further conserve and enhance the scenic beauty of the area and to provide a rich habitat for a range of wildlife.
• Maintaining the diversity of geology and traditional buildings that contributes to the NCA by using, promoting and encouraging locally sourced materials and skills for walling and building repair and construction.
• Recognising that sourcing traditional building stone locally can enhance geodiversity by creating new temporary or permanent exposures or by improving existing ones.
• Promoting, through engagement, people’s understanding of the combined effect that multiple historic features have on the landscape character and the importance of their conservation and presentation.
• Bringing all heritage assets within the NCA into sympathetic management, seeking communities’ engagement in the process of restoring and maintaining their heritage, and explaining English Heritage’s Heritage at Risk register.
• Protecting historic barrows and areas of known archaeological interest that are at risk from ploughing by reverting to pasture.
• Maintaining the setting of St Catherine’s Chapel and the Second World War remains along The Fleet.
• Continuing to build on the 2012 Olympic Legacy and encouraging other forms of recreation, for example water-based ones, while being sympathetic to geological and biodiversity resources; and continuing to promote the value of the natural heritage of Weymouth through initiatives such as the Natural Weymouth and Portland Partnership.
• Promoting sustainable tourism initiatives that target a broad range of visitors and reduce car dependency, particularly in and around
  Weymouth, accommodating high visitor numbers while conserving the landscape and its tranquillity.
• Developing multi-user routes and improved route connectivity characterised by high-quality surfacing and signage and providing sustainable transport options wherever possible to enable more people of varying abilities to enjoy the natural environment.

SEO 4

SEO 4: Safeguard and manage soil and water resources, allowing naturally functioning hydrological processes to maintain water quality and supply; reduce flooding; and manage land to reduce soil erosion and water pollution and to retain and capture carbon.

For example by:

• Continuing to support farming at a sustainable level with grazing and cropping levels that provide food, lead to improved soil quality, reduce soil erosion, benefit biodiversity and reinforce a sense of place and current patterns of land use.
• Increasing the amount of farmland managed under principles established by the Catchment Sensitive Farming Programme and the Farmland Bird Initiative for the associated benefits that this will bring in relation to
  water flow management and regulation, water quality and, in particular, reduction in nitrate and phosphate pollution, prevention of soil erosion and increased biodiversity.
• Maintaining and restoring hedgerow boundaries that are characteristic of the valleys and associated field patterns, especially where these help to control cross-land flows and prevent soil erosion and nutrient leaching.
• Creating woodland in appropriate locations to help to reduce the impact of flooding and for the benefit to water quality, particularly around Weymouth where this may help to improve the setting of the town and peri-urban development.
• Restoring and enhancing remnant wetland habitats, including springline marsh at the foot of the scarp and rare patches of valley mire and fen meadow in the valley bottoms, to the benefit of flood storage, water quality, landscape diversity and biodiversity.
• Creating grassland buffer strip verges running across slopes to provide a buffer to soil erosion and nutrient run-off in areas of arable production, including the catchments of The Fleet and River Bride.
• Continuing the opportunity to plan for the creation or extension of new broadleaved woodland and grassland habitat mosaics to provide the landscape setting for Weymouth and robust, attractive new landscapes, thereby strengthening the ecological network throughout this NCA and adjacent NCAs, particularly along the length of the coast and limestone ridgeways.
• Enabling the recommendations of relevant implementation measures under the Water Framework Directive and Catchment Flood Management Plans.
• Seeking opportunities to reinstate riverine habitats and connect rivers to their flood plains, for example the surface water management scheme at Burton Bradstock, to help to reduce flooding and increase water storage capacity in order to assist with reducing flood risk at Burton Bradstock.
• Ensuring the reversion of areas of arable land on steep slopes, choosing locations according to opportunities to assist biodiversity adaptation to changes in climate, improvements in groundwater quality, and in particular nitrate, phosphate and sedimentation issues and aquifer recharge; and managing grasslands in favourable condition through extensive grazing.
• Ensuring continued efforts to maintain beach water quality through investment by water companies in sewage treatment plants and infrastructure and land management-based initiatives such as those which seek to reduce soil erosion, slow down and store water during high rainfall, increase water quality and enhance biodiversity.
• Ensuring that farming patterns around The Fleet are sympathetic to reducing nutrient loss and soil erosion to lessen eutrophication of the waters and a loss in biodiversity as a result.

Additional opportunity 1

Additional opportunity 1: Plan for the creation of new landscapes around settlements, particularly around Weymouth, and appropriate development within the area. Reinforce the existing landscape structure as part of any identified growth of urban areas, hard infrastructure and other settlements, ensuring that quality green infrastructure is incorporated, enhancing health, access, recreation, the landscape, biodiversity and geodiversity.

For example by:

• Avoiding development that detracts from the character, natural beauty and tranquillity of the NCA and identifying approaches which enhance and reinforce them.
• Planting new woodland, using native broadleaved species, between and within new developments to filter views and preserve the tranquillity of the area.
• Promoting the use of sustainable building design and construction, using traditional materials and styles wherever possible, incorporating renewable energy generation and water recycling technologies.
• Exploring the role of short rotation coppice and other biomass crops within the framework of new development; and keeping fuel sources close to demand.
• Creating reedbeds as part of developments to filter potentially polluted water before it is discharged to rivers and at the coast.
• Providing access opportunities and natural open spaces close to where people live linked to wider multi-modal routes.
• Ensuring that extensions to settlements, such as those around Weymouth and its environs, are designed so they visually and functionally integrate with the surrounding landscape and the existing urban edge. Key views to and from settlements should be retained.
• Providing access to quality green space through well-designed green infrastructure which will benefit health and wellbeing and provide habitats that increases the permeability of the urban landscape to biodiversity.
• Ensuring that new developments provide biodiversity enhancement rather than just mitigation as with the Lorton Valley.
• Designing sustainable drainage systems and surface water management plans that can create new wetland features close to urban areas and new development, becoming part of a green infrastructure network.
• Conserving the area’s traditional architecture and manors, vernacular and historical buildings in local limestone, encouraging the use of appropriate styles and locally distinctive materials, ensuring that the repair, restoration and/or conversion of vernacular buildings are carried out with due regard to this historical interest using local and appropriate materials, styles and detailing.