Landscape & landform

The physical and perceptual characteristics of a landscape are what makes a place. The National Landscape is valued for its special qualities, which include its undeveloped rural character, exceptional undeveloped coastline, tranquillity and dark night skies. Such landscape attributes need to be maintained for the future, and this is best achieved through development that respects the pattern and character of the places in which it is located.

Wildlife

When development impacts upon wildlife, the planning system must ensure that these effects are dealt with appropriately, including through mitigation and compensation. Ranging from locally important features to internationally significant sites, all habitats within the National Landscape contribute to the area’s natural beauty. Securing mitigation and enhancement measures that are appropriate to site specific considerations and in keeping with landscape character is important within landscape planning.

Living textbook

The National Landscape contains highly important natural and manmade landscape features that tell us about the past, including our natural history and civilization. Planning has the potential to both safeguard historical assets and reveal their significance. The ongoing appreciation of these assets relies on their conservation and positive management, as well as measures that improve our interpretation and understanding of them.

Cultural legacy

Changes to culturally significant landscapes can often evoke deep feelings from those who value them. The planning system and cultural institutions have a key role to play in delivering sensitive change in areas with strong cultural identities, by safeguarding assets and better revealing their significance.

Opportunities

· New development and planning gain may provide opportunities to conserve, enhance restore and create valued landscape features. The strengthened duty to seek to further the purpose of National Landscapes may provide further grounds for wider enhancements, potentially through offsetting and compensatory mechanisms, where impacts cannot be avoided or directly mitigated.

· Biodiversity net gain requirements can strengthen and enlarge ecological networks.

· The requirement for developments in the Poole Harbour catchment to be nutrient neutral may provide opportunities for beneficial landscape change and nature recovery.

· The popularity of Dorset as a destination to live and work and the resultant development pressure will create opportunities for securing planning gain.

· There are opportunities to enhance the sustainability and vitality of communities through increased provision of affordable housing in response to recognised local need.

· Emerging techniques in remote sensing and tranquillity modelling provide opportunities for improved monitoring of landscape features and condition.

· Neighbourhood planning provides a tool through which communities can direct growth toward locations that conserve and enhance local character.

· There are opportunities to soften the impact of traffic management schemes within villages through sensitive design measures, such as those contained within the traffic in villages toolkit.

· There are opportunities to improve sustainability through the implementation of small scale-renewable energy projects and community energy initiatives.

· Changes in agriculture may result in opportunities for the redevelopment of brownfield countryside sites that can meet existing and novel needs.

· Continued growth in demand for camping and glamping can provide good diversification opportunities if sensitively designed and located and there is some potential for cross-subsidisation of initiatives such linked to nature recovery and regenerative agriculture.

· Advances in communication technology have the potential to diversify the rural economy.

· Partnerships with artists and cultural organisations may provide creative approach to enhancing the public realm and appreciation of the landscape.

· Longevity and value-for-money in development can be achieved with high quality design and good materials.

Pressures

· Targets relating to housing and climate change:

• The requirement on Local Planning Authorities to address housing need, which has been increasing, has implications for the potential identification of large-scale housing allocations within the National Landscape and its setting.
• Net zero targets are driving considerable interest in large-scale renewable energy projects. This coupled with technological advances, increases the potential identification of sites within the National Landscape and its setting for projects such as solar farms, onshore and offshore wind farms and battery energy storage systems. There may also be associated pressures arising from upgrades to the electrical transmission network that are also related to net zero targets.

· Demographics:

• An increase in population brings a need for wider infrastructure and service upgrades.
• Housing stock is not always well aligned with demand, for example in relation to property sizes and the amount of social rented homes.
• Numerous second homes and informal holiday lets distort the housing market.
• An ageing population affects the sustainability of some community facilities and services.

· Visitors and recreation:

• The ability of popular areas to absorb further visitor pressure is finite and requires careful management.
• Changes to recreational uses within the countryside, including increased activity, which can affect landscape character.
• Overprovision of visitor accommodation affects levels of residential housing stock.
• The popularity of some areas, particularly along the coast, brings significant pressure for expansion of camping and caravanning sites in sensitive locations.
• Glamping can introduce semi-permanent features in sensitive areas.
• Incremental changes are affecting rural roads, including signage, traffic management and road improvement initiatives.

• Proposed planning reforms could increase risks to natural beauty.

• Ongoing interest in oil and gas extraction within parts of the National Landscape.

• Changes to farming practices include a trend toward an increasing scale of operations with associated landscape and visual effects from farms.

• Improved requirements for the control of pollution from agriculture can result in substantial new infrastructure, such as slurry lagoons and covered silage storage.

• Subdivision of agricultural land can lead to increasingly diffuse agricultural development.

• Growing interest in viticulture and associated development such as wineries, which can affect both the pattern and character of the landscape.

· Coastal change and its management will result in pressure to defend and/or relocate assets.

Local Planning, Highway and Flood Authorities, Statutory Undertakers, Natural England, Environment Agency, Marine Management Organisation, Town and Parish Councils, Community Partnerships and Neighbourhood Planning groups.

Planning and development conserve and enhance the Dorset National Landscape, ensuring its setting and special qualities are protected for present and future generations. Sensitive siting, high-quality design, and robust management underpin all development, with major proposals subject to rigorous assessment and a strong presumption in favour of conserving and enhancing landscape character.

Policy C1a: Support development that conserves and enhances the National Landscape

• Support development that conserves and enhances the National Landscape, ensuring sensitive siting and design that respects local character.

• Only support development that does not conserve and enhance the National Landscape if it is necessary and in the public interest, with major proposals subject to detailed consideration of exceptional circumstances and public interest grounds.

• Favour the conservation, enhancement, and restoration of characteristic landscape features, seeking net gain for landscape elements both on and off-site.

• Require high standards of design, materials, and workmanship, balancing viability with public benefit and landscape significance.

• Where primary design cannot address landscape and visual effects, require robust secondary mitigation, with consideration for compensation or offsetting for any residual adverse impacts.

• Require positive contributions to green infrastructure and ecological networks, ensuring all aspects are well-designed and enhance landscape ecology.

• Ensure full consideration of geodiversity conservation in relevant plans and strategies, recognising links with extraction industries and the built environment.

• Conserve and enhance the coast, maintaining its undeveloped and tranquil nature, and protect the World Heritage Site setting from individual and cumulative impacts.

• Adopt natural process-led approaches to coastal management and implement coastal change management objectives.

• Manage landward and seaward settings to conserve and enhance character, including assessment of views, noise, and wider environmental impacts.

• Support conservation and enhancement of the coastal and marine environment, including creation of Marine Protected Areas where appropriate.

Robust landscape assessment and ongoing monitoring underpin sound planning decisions, ensuring proposals conserve and enhance the National Landscape’s character and scenic beauty. Evidence-based decision-making and regular monitoring guide adaptive management and continuous improvement.

Policy C2a: Require high-quality landscape assessment and evidence-based planning

• Assess all proposals affecting the National Landscape to a high standard, with proportionate Landscape and Visual Impact Assessments and Appraisals in line with industry guidelines.

• Use landscape and seascape character assessment to evaluate effects on the National Landscape’s character and appearance.

• Ensure Local and Neighbourhood Plans are underpinned by robust landscape evidence.

• Test proposals against their ability to conserve and enhance landscape and scenic beauty, giving significant weight to the area’s special qualities in planning decisions.

• Refuse proposals harmful to landscape character unless benefits clearly outweigh the protection afforded to the National Landscape; require mitigation, conditions, planning gain, or compensation where residual impacts remain.

• Monitor and assess changes in landscape condition to inform appropriate action.

Essential development that meets community needs and supports the local economy is enabled, provided it is compatible with conserving and enhancing the National Landscape. Development is sensitively designed and located, supporting rural livelihoods, community wellbeing, and environmental resilience.

Policy C3a: Enable appropriate development that supports landscape management

• Support appropriate farm diversification schemes that contribute to conservation, enhancement, and sustainable development of the National Landscape.

• Support appropriate proposals to restore and reuse of traditional barns and buildings.

• Support minerals extraction at appropriate scale and density, with high-quality restoration to benefit landscape, biodiversity, and access.

Policy C3b: Enable appropriate development that supports community needs

• Enable affordable and social housing on appropriate rural exception sites that meet proven local need, with locally sensitive design.

• Support well-designed projects that reduce traffic impacts.

Policy C3c: Enable appropriate development that supports adaptation to, and mitigation of climate change

• Promote measures to increase energy efficiency and support renewable energy production of appropriate scale, ensuring compatibility with National Landscape objectives. Large-scale development within the National Landscape and its setting will only be considered permissible where impacts are limited in extent and severity. Furthermore, projects will be expected to deliver substantive mitigation and enhancement in line with the purpose of the National Landscape.

• Support woodland planting and management proposals that enhance landscape character, biodiversity, connectivity, and public amenity, building resilience to climate change and disease.

Development that harms the natural beauty, tranquillity, or special qualities of the National Landscape is avoided. Landscape character, biodiversity, dark night skies, and local distinctiveness are protected from inappropriate or excessive development.

Policy C4a: Prevent and mitigate negative impacts of development on landscape and visual character affecting the National Landscape

• Remove existing and avoid creating new features detrimental to landscape character, tranquillity, and special qualities.

• Protect and, where possible, enhance the quality of views into, within, and out of the National Landscape.

• Safeguard the pattern of landscape features, including settlements, that underpin local identity.

• Avoid and reduce cumulative effects that erode landscape character and quality.

• Avoid large-scale or high-density housing and employment development at settlement edges that weakens landscape quality.

• Avoid urbanisation and negative impacts from highway management.

• Conserve and enhance dark night skies and the unlit character of the countryside, mitigating impacts from lighting.

Policy C4b: Prevent and mitigate negative impacts of development on nature

• Avoid and reduce impacts on biodiversity, requiring the hierarchy of avoid, mitigate, and compensate, and achieving net gain for biodiversity.

Policy C4c: Limit forms of development with the greatest potential for harm

• Require use of previously developed land to limit expansion into sensitive countryside.

• Protect against overprovision of visitor accommodation, especially where it weakens countryside character.

• Discourage growth in second homes within the National Landscape.

• Resist proliferation of masts and vertical structures, requiring infrastructure sharing.

• Ensure coastal and flood defences, aquaculture, and fisheries development are compatible with the undeveloped coastline.

• Require further oil and gas infrastructure to reuse or augment existing sites and contribute to landscape restoration.