140 - Yeovil Scarplands : 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: Work with the local farming and land management community to adapt to evolving funding mechanisms and climate change, encouraging business choices that balance food production with provision of a range of ecosystem services.

For example by:

• Working with farmers and other land managers to shape the way that land is managed, innovating and diversifying to maintain the agricultural economy while simultaneously conserving and enhancing the physical, ecological and cultural landscape that is highly valued by local people and visitors.
• Making the connections between changing agricultural land management choices, increasingly frequent severe weather patterns and the downstream implications for flood risk management.
• Investigating the need for and potential to repair and enhance ecosystem services. Take a place-based approach to identify (using sufficiently robust and accessible evidence) and prioritise areas where action will provide services both within and outside the National Character Area (NCA).
• Alongside established agri-environment schemes, identifying and implementing a system of payment for the protection and enhancement of ecosystem services, allowing land managers to make choices that are not always driven by the traditional commodity markets.
• Creating new habitats in the NCA that are tailored to the farmed landscape and the management techniques employed there. These will include wetlands along rivers and streams, legume- and herb-rich grasslands, scrub/coppice and, in the urban environment, a system of green infrastructure and sustainable drainage systems. Provision of ecosystem services will be as important in design and location as wildlife.
• Increasing land manager understanding of the importance of the soil resource and the need for its sympathetic management for the delivery of a range of benefits and services and to enable better management of the costs of agricultural production.
• Working with farmers and landowners to promote best practice in fertilizer application, nutrient and manure management, cultivation and soil management through catchment sensitive farming principles.
• Promoting land use patterns on the arable areas which create groundcover in the autumn and winter months, arresting water flows, reducing erosion and boosting aquifer recharge. Seek to minimise negative impacts of compaction and soil organic matter loss from excessive tillage.
• Working with owners and managers of both large and small estates to ensure that the significant positive influence they exert on the landscape is maintained while enabling them to continue adapting to changing economic and farming developments and societal expectations.

SEO 2

SEO 2: Protect, manage and enhance the diverse but coherent pastoral and mixed farming landscape character of the clay vales and limestone and sandstone scarps, their semi-natural grasslands and woodland and their characteristic wildlife. Manage the simple patterns of land use maintained by the long history of agriculture.

For example by:

• Describing the links between the current distribution of semi-natural habitats and the strong landscape character with the history of settlement and land use over the last 4,000 years.
• Ensuring that the Special Areas of Conservation, the suite of biological Sites of Special Scientific Interest and the local wildlife sites in the NCA are managed appropriately.
• Returning traditional management regimes to those habitats that require them, particularly grazing to the range of grasslands and active management interventions in woodlands.
• Encouraging the management and restoration of parklands and gardens associated with historic estates.
• Restoring and strengthening the matrix of connecting landscape/habitat features within a functional farmed environment, such as hedgerows, copses, thickets, streams and ditches, to increase permeability and migratory opportunities for wildlife.
• Conserving the pattern of field boundaries with veteran trees (particularly in the north), avoiding further loss, restoring hedgerows and establishing a new generation of hedgerow trees.
• Returning Plantations on Ancient Woodland Sites to broadleaved species. Explore and promote local wood fuel/produce schemes across the woodland resource in the NCA.
• Identifying potential impacts of climate change on grassland and woodland habitats and targeting climate change adaptation actions.
• Understanding the implications of and planning potential responses in vegetation cover to environmental changes and pathogens, with particular attention being paid to loss of ash from ash die-back and oak from ‘acute oak decline’.
• Giving high regard to the guidelines contained in the Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural beauty (AONB) Landscape Character Assessments and ensuring that the relevant policies outlined in the Dorset AONB Management Plan are implemented.

SEO 3

SEO 3: Protect and manage the National Character Area’s rich cultural inheritance, including its historic environment and geodiversity. Raise the profile of the Yeovil Scarplands as a landscape of distinction and, in many places, great beauty.

For example by:

• Maintaining the settlement pattern of hamlets, and isolated farmsteads with a strong vernacular architecture and the network of winding lanes and piecemeal enclosure, reflecting past enclosure activity.
• Maintaining the setting of the numerous manor houses and parkland within the NCA.
• Ensuring that the wealth of heritage assets, including above-ground and buried archaeological features such as earthwork remains, Roman remains, manors, parkland and traditional farm buildings, are protected, conserved and enhanced, and are appropriately managed.
• Conserving and enhancing hedgerows and the many veteran trees and orchards to maintain these features in the landscape, and ensuring continuity through planting and management.
• Maintaining the diversity of geology and traditional buildings that contribute to the NCA by using, promoting and encouraging locally sourced materials and skills for building repair and construction.
• Recognising that sourcing traditional building stone locally can enhance geodiversity by creating new temporary or permanent geological exposures or by improving existing exposures.
• Ensuring that the sense of place imparted by the localised use of specific building stones is maintained and, as often as possible, reinforced by new development.
• Promoting, through engagement with local communities, an understanding of the combined effect that multiple historic features and farm and settlement patterns 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.
• Describing the connections between the geology of the NCA and its settlement and land use history.
• Protecting important features, for geological/geomorphological interpretation, from inappropriate changes in land use, for example maintaining the views from the tops of the limestone scarps.

SEO 4

SEO 4: Manage and plan for growth in the area around Yeovil and the other towns in this part of the National Character Area as they expand as employment and housing centres, ensuring that landscape character is used as a framework for future growth and enhancement.

For example by:

• Creating plans for the growth of these areas which take advantage of the full range of positive impacts they can have on the surrounding countryside and existing developed areas.
• Softening the impacts of the A303 on the surrounding landscape through use of strategic tree planting and ensuring that new road- related infrastructure is accompanied by good quality landscape design.
• Minimising light pollution emanating from industrial developments and road infrastructure.
• Creating new semi-natural habitats close to existing and new development, which will soften the impact of new developments and provide resilience to water flows in extreme weather events.
• Using elements of traditional vernacular in new developments to maintain the sense of place and to create links to the existing built environment.
• Planting new woodland, using native broadleaved species, between and within new developments, to filter views and preserve the tranquillity of the area.
• Providing access opportunities and natural open spaces close to where people live, linked to wider multimodal routes.
• Making sure that key views to and from settlements are retained or improved when developments occur.
• Providing access to quality greenspace through well-designed green infrastructure, which will benefit health and wellbeing and provide habitats that increase the permeability of the urban landscape to biodiversity.
• Ensuring that new developments provide biodiversity enhancement rather than just mitigation.
• Using new developments to create links for new and existing residents to connect to their rural hinterland, both physically and culturally – using new access routes, community orchards, allotments, links with local producers and local produce, and so on.