Partnership Plan 2022-2027

In 2019, we celebrated the 70th anniversary of the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949, which led to the designation of the first national park in England, the Peak District National Park.

We now have 10 national parks in England and the New Forest was one of the last to be formally designated in 2005. Covering 220 square miles on the central south coast of England, it is the smallest national park in the UK, other than the Broads. Yet it is also home to more than 34,000 people and 2,500 local businesses. More than 16 million people live within a 90-minute drive of the New Forest and its ease of access make it one of the most visited national parks in the country.

Our national parks are the ‘breathing spaces’ for the nation and over 70 years on from the first designation, the Government recognises national parks as our most iconic and beautiful places, representing our shared heritage and national identity, and home to many of our rural communities and businesses.

The Government sets out a vision for nationally protected landscapes as: ‘A coherent national network of beautiful, nature-rich spaces that all parts of society can easily access and enjoy. Protected landscapes will support thriving local communities and economies, improve our public health and wellbeing, drive forward nature recovery, and build our resilience to climate change.’

In 2019 the UK became the first national government to declare an environment and climate emergency. That decision marked a renewed sense of urgency in tackling climate change with the Government legally committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2050. The Government has recognised the key role of protected landscapes in addressing the climate and nature emergency.

In the New Forest National Park, we are already seeing wetter winters, hotter, drier summers, rising sea levels, an increasing frequency of extreme weather events and longer periods of higher fire risk. Combined, these factors have far reaching implications for our biodiversity, our communities, land managers and local businesses.

More than two-fifths of UK species including animals, birds and butterflies have seen significant declines in recent decades. The State of Nature report (2019), which draws on scientific monitoring since the 1970s, showed that there has been no let-up in net losses for the UK’s wildlife. More intensive agriculture is still driving declines in farmland nature, while climate change is also having an increasing effect, with average UK temperatures rising by 1C since the 1980s. The state of wildlife in the New Forest remains a major concern, with just over 50% of our Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) judged to be in ‘favourable condition’.

A challenging issue for nature conservation and recovery in the New Forest is how to respond to increasing demand for access without compromising the integrity of protected wildlife sites.

Transport is absolutely fundamental to the sustainable future of the New Forest – how we move affects how we live, work and interact; how we experience places; how our businesses operate; and our health and wellbeing.

The New Forest is one of the most visited national parks in England and traffic within the National Park is a major issue for many residents and visitors.

The New Forest is celebrated as a living, working landscape where sustainable farming and land management systems deliver many benefits to society – increasingly known as ‘public goods’. The unique and ancient system of common grazing is a critical component of ensuring the Forest survives as an extensive, intact cultural landscape.

This new Plan coincides with the start of a period of ‘agricultural transition’ following the UK’s departure from the EU. Funds will be diverted from Direct Payments to farmers into a new Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS) from 2024. This will replace the Higher Level Stewardship scheme that over 12 years has provided more than £22 million to help restore and enhance the internationally-important habitats of the New Forest. Partners on this scheme are now working together to understand what is needed to deliver public goods into the future. From 2021-24, a Farming in Protected Landscapes programme will support farmers and land managers in the National Park to deliver environmental outcomes and contribute to Government priorities for nature, climate, people and place.

The provision of affordable housing in the New Forest is consistently raised as one of the biggest challenges facing local communities in the National Park. The affordability of housing is a major barrier to sustainable communities in the New Forest, where the average house price is around 15 times average earnings – making the New Forest the least affordable national park in the UK.

The high proportion of larger properties, and the associated high price of housing, make it particularly hard for young people and young families to secure low-cost housing that would enable them to continue living in the area.

There is some early evidence to suggest that the pandemic has accelerated people moving from high density urban areas to the countryside, which together with more people choosing to work from home, is likely to increase pricing pressures on the National Park’s limited housing stock.

The English national parks were created in part to provide a healing space, both mentally and physically, in the aftermath of the Second World War. The pandemic has similarly raised many fundamental questions about the way we can sustain healthy lives in harmony with our environment.

There is a greater appreciation of our natural environment and the benefits of having accessible green space on our doorstep. Just as in the 1940s, national parks are well placed to be inclusive and accessible places that support the nation’s health and wellbeing and to lead the way on sustainable tourism and opportunities for people to volunteer and engage in community projects for the benefit of all.

Government is responding to calls for these opportunities to be improved and more open to all by supporting a renewed focus in protected landscapes to reach and welcome people and remove barriers to access to national parks for all parts of society.

There is a huge and diverse range of organisations, charities, groups and fora working in and for the New Forest, with healthy levels of public engagement and participation. There are some excellent examples of partnership working but equally there are many areas where organisations and communities could work better together and pool resources to achieve more and in doing so strengthen understanding of the New Forest beyond our boundaries, presenting a more unified, powerful voice to national and regional policy and decision makers.

At the time of writing, the Government is consulting on how partner organisations can work together more effectively in protected landscapes. It is also widely recognised that strengthened management plans would secure greater ambition for our special landscapes and to better reflect all parts of society.

This Plan takes account of the proposed direction in the Government consultation and is written in anticipation of a strengthened role for management plans and requirement for public bodies to work more collaboratively going forward.

Climate change, along with biodiversity loss, is the greatest long-term challenge of the present day. The impact of climate change on the New Forest is likely to be wide reaching, with warmer, wetter winters, hotter, drier summers, rising sea levels and an increasing frequency of extreme weather events, the effects of which are already being seen. The overriding challenge for the Partnership Plan is to make a significant contribution to both mitigating and facilitating the adaptation of people and wildlife to a warming world.

The National Park Authority declared a climate and nature emergency in January 2020, with a commitment to reduce its own greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2030. Many of the partner organisations have made similar declarations and we all recognise that progress can only be made through collaborative working and a collective ambition to achieve net zero with nature.

The natural environment is the most important and effective solution we have for capturing and sequestering carbon long-term. As a partnership we will work to safeguard the New Forest landscape, restore habitats to sequester carbon and combat biodiversity loss as well as support behaviour changes to ensure the National Park continues to be a treasured landscape for the nation.

The New Forest National Park is one of the most valuable areas for wildlife in Europe and has the highest proportion of designated nature conservation sites of any national  park in the country (56% of the National Park is a Special Area of Conservation, Special Protection Area or Ramsar Site and a further 5% is non-statutory sites (SINCs)).

Even though they remain important we can no longer simply protect nature from harm through special sites and reserves. The unique mosaic of heathland, mires, grassland, woodlands rivers and ponds of the Open Forest; the fields, hedges and woodlands of the forest fringe; the species-rich floodplains of the Avon Valley; and the grazing marshes and saline lagoons of the coastal plain – all are under threat from a variety of factors including climate change, recreation pressure, new diseases and invasive species.

The condition of the New Forest Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) has shown a slight increase in recent years as a result of large-scale habitat restoration work under the New Forest Higher Level Stewardship scheme, with 53% in favourable condition (2022). There is no comprehensive assessment of the condition of non-statutory wildlife sites.

Urgent action is needed to ensure our habitats are more resilient, better managed, bigger and more joined up. Ecosystems need to be restored and wildlife needs to be able to move through the landscape freely if it is to adapt to change, which means looking beyond the Open Forest and working across the wider countryside.

The New Forest is well placed to drive a nature recovery network locally, in particular through increased connectivity within and beyond the boundaries of the National Park. Nature cannot recover if it is restricted to isolated pockets and therefore we need to ensure the nature recovery network is joined up across a landscape scale.

Nature Recovery is a major commitment in the Government’s 25 Year Environment Plan and the Government is putting National Parks at the heart of driving forward and delivering nature recovery and building our resilience to climate change. The Government has also committed to protect 30% of land in the UK by 2030 to support nature recovery. By bringing together partners, legislation and funding, we can make an important contribution to this target and provide nature-based solutions that will restore ecosystems, habitats and prioritise key species for recovery and reintroduction.

People need nature and culture for their physical, mental and spiritual health. The future of the New Forest depends on future generations understanding and valuing this internationally-important landscape – and helping to care for it. Education officers across Forest organisations teach 10,000 children and young people a year with sessions tailored to learning about the New Forest and rangers work with thousands more through their family-focussed events and activities. Many more are engaged through the media, print and online platforms.

We want to encourage greater understanding and appreciation of the National Park, whilst ensuring minimum impact, and support the social and economic benefits that visitors bring in a sustainable way.

We also want to specifically help people who face barriers or particular challenges to access so that they can benefit equally from engagement with the National Park. Effective engagement, interpretation and communication programmes with new and existing partners will be required to ensure we are a National Park for all.

The New Forest is a living working landscape. It is one of the few remaining extensive systems of common rights operating in lowland Europe. Maintaining a high-quality natural environment can also contribute substantial economic benefits by supporting sustainable tourism and helping to attract high-value businesses and employees. Local produce and local businesses are vital to the health and well being of our rural environment and local economy.

National policy also recognises the need for small-scale, sustainably located development within national parks to support the socio-economic well-being of our communities. We need to support community and economic recovery from Covid-19 and address societal issues such as the high cost of housing and an ageing population.

The long-term survival of the New Forest is just as dependent on what happens around the boundary, regionally and nationally as within. We need to consolidate our networks and influence, nurture a culture of collaboration and enable delivery of policies and a package of measures to ensure the National Park landscape, economy and communities thrive. We need to be better than the sum of our parts to meet the challenges ahead and to ensure we are as efficient and effective a team for the New Forest as possible.

We want to harness the wealth of experience, skills and views in delivering this Partnership Plan. The Plan will be a living programme of work that will evolve over time, adapting and improving to new challenges and changing agendas. As well as building effective and impactful working arrangements to deliver, we also need to ensure that we hear and take account of all sections of our community and incorporate their ideas and innovations as we move forwards. Everyone stands to benefit when we embrace and value the diversity of thoughts, perspectives and ways of working that people from different backgrounds, experiences and identities bring to the National Park. Our work and our National Park will be richer and more impactful if we take account of and include the views, talents and skills of all sections of society.

We will ensure a range of interventions are in place to enable all sectors of our community to have their say, take part and influence action in the National Park.

Data, evidence and understanding of the context we work in must underpin and help guide the Partnership Plan and our work with different organisations and groups. It will also be needed to monitor and measure impact. We will establish a National Park insights capability with universities, businesses and other stakeholders to ensure that our decision-making is anchored in robust research, that our action is monitored and that we are able to capture regular insights into the views of the community and of relevant social, economic and policy context.